Community Mobilization and Community‐Based Participatory Research to Prevent Youth Violence Among Asian and Immigrant Populations

Abstract

Many community mobilization activities for youth violence prevention involve the researchers assisting communities in identifying, adapting, and/or tailoring evidence-based programs to fit the community needs, population, and cultural and social contexts. This article describes a slightly different framework in which the collaborative research/evaluation project emerged from the community mobilization activities. As will be discussed, this collaborative, sustained partnership was possible in the context of the Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention's (UC Berkeley ACE) community mobilization activities that brought the issue of youth violence, particularly among immigrant and minority populations, to the forefront of many of the community partners' agendas. The East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC) was one of the partners that came to the table, which facilitated the community-based engagement/mobilization. UC Berkeley ACE collaborated with EBAYC to evaluate an after-school program and an alternative probation program serving a diverse youth and immigrant population, including African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics. This article describes UC Berkeley ACE's community mobilization activity and the collaborative partnership with EBAYC, discusses how the evaluations incorporated community-based principles in design and practice, and presents some findings from the evaluations.

Understanding Youth Violence in Kumasi: Does Community Socialization Matter? A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Seal et al [24] (cf. Warner and Fowler [20]) explain that some researchers like Le and colleagues [26], Leff et al [27], and Zimmerman and others have studied combined theory and practice to understand youth violence [28]. Yonas et al [29] have explored the utility of employing the strain theory in explaining youth violence at the community level.…”

The Role of Collaboration in Facilitating Policy Change in Youth Violence Prevention: a Review of the Literature

“…The university adopted a community advisory council to coordinate among university departments and the external community. Six other externally catalyzed collaborations also were funded through CDC’s ACE initiative, but did not report policy changes (see Azrael and Hemenway 2011; Griffith et al 2008; Le et al 2011; Leff et al 2011; Mirabal et al 2008; and Nation et al 2011). …”

Bridging the gap between research and practice by strengthening academic-community partnerships for violence research.

“…Despite the potential for CBPR to advance the study of violence and inform the development of strengths-based interventions, there are few applications of CBPR in the field compared with uses of nonparticipatory research methods. Existing applications of CBPR focus on violence measurement development (Hausman et al, 2013;White, Yuan, Cook, & Abbey, 2013), diverse populations (Falconier et al, 2013;Moya, Chávez-Baray, & Martinez, 2014;Nicolaidis et al, 2010;Scott et al, 2013;Shoultz, Magnussen, Manzano, Arias, & Spencer, 2010), youth violence prevention (Le et al, 2011;Leff et al, 2010;Snider, Kirst, Abubakar, Ahmad, & Nathens, 2010), and faith-based interventions (Kataoka et al, 2006). The body of CBPR literature on resilience is even smaller, and mostly limited to indigenous populations (Goodkind, LaNoue, Lee, Freeland, & Freund, 2012;Mohatt et al, 2008;Tsey et al, 2007).…”