Kiwis and kids, communities and connections: The lessons of energy express on bridging policy and community discourse

Abstract

Intervention programs for low‐income children and families must work to connect the policies and practices of intervention to the communities that they intend to serve. This article describes Energy Express, a summer reading and nutrition program for children in low‐income communities across the state of West Virginia. Energy Express has consistently demonstrated beneficial effects in maintaining and improving children's reading and in increasing collaboration between schools and other community organizations. The success of the program in each community is attributed in part to the ways in which the program acknowledges and values local knowledge, the purposeful tension between centralization of planning and purpose and localization in implementation, and the understanding of the multiple meanings of community. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The effect of two elementary school-based prevention interventions on being offered tobacco and the transition to smoking

“…Data are from a universal preventive intervention trial that was conducted in first grade in nine inner city public schools (Ialongo et al, 1999a). The participants have subsequently been followed-up over 12 years.…”

“…The Classroom-Centered intervention (CC) targeted teachers’ behavior management and academic instructional skills (Ialongo et al, 1999a). The percentage of the teacher’s implementation of the CC intervention ranged from 30% to 78% (mean=60%, SD=17%).…”

“…The percentage of the teacher’s implementation of the CC intervention ranged from 30% to 78% (mean=60%, SD=17%). The Family School Partnership intervention (FSP) focused on improving parent-teacher interaction and support for child learning and prosocial behavior (Ialongo et al, 1999a). A major component of the FSP intervention was a series of 7 workshops offered to all parents of children in the FSP condition.…”

“…Except for a higher rate of family tobacco use among these 13 participants (38% versus 19%), no significant differences were found with regard to any other sample characteristics when compared to the remaining 628 youth that comprised the analytic sample of this study. As described in Ialongo et al (1999), the intervention conditions were equivalent with respect to all potential confounders with the exception of one (Ialongo et al, 1999a). Students in the CC condition had slightly higher teacher ratings of aggressive-disruptive behavior than control youth (CC, MN = 1.78, SD= 0.98; Control, MN =1.50, SD =0.80) .…”

“…Of note, universal intervention effects have been found to vary as a function of gender and pre-intervention levels of the targeted risk behaviors (Ialongo et al 1999a; Ialongo et al, 2001). Since neither Storr et al (2002) nor Wang et al (2009) examined whether the beneficial intervention effects seen on survival to smoking initiation were moderated by gender or pre-intervention levels of aggressive-disruptive behavior, we examine both in this paper.…”