Community-Based Participatory Prevention Research (Community Partnership)

The overall objective of this evaluation/intervention project is to investigate the effectiveness of community organizations' efforts to prevent injuries and the role of participatory action research in this process. Specific aims include a) measure the association between the social ecology and organizational factors of an injury prevention coalition and its ability to plan and implement an injury prevention program; b) investigate the relationship between social ecology, organizational factors and the community organization's ability to improve community health and safety; c) evaluate a training program to increase community capacity to conduct injury prevention assessment, planning, and program implementation; and d) investigate the relationships between an academiccommunity initiative (training in injury program planning); social ecology and community organizational factors; and improvement in intermediary measures of injury prevention. Community organizations for injury prevention in four counties will participate in this evaluation project. For each of the four community organizations, factors associated with organizational structure and processes will be measured using a combination of qualitative and quantitative analytic techniques. In addition, the context (social ecology) in which each organization exists will be assessed. Two community organizations will receive trainings developed to increase their capacity to design, implement and evaluate a local injury prevention program. The increase in the community organization's ability to plan effective injury prevention programs as a result of their participation in the training program will be evaluated. Intermediary injury outcome measures will be used to evaluate the impact of the four community organizations' injury prevention efforts. The results of this multi.:level project will contribute to an understanding of community-building through participatory research to prevent injury.