# Evaluation of a Comprehensive Community-Level Approach to Youth Violence Prevention

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $1,191,964

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Youth violence is a major threat to the health and wellbeing of youths in the U.S. Our project focuses on
Richmond, Virginia, a medium-sized city that is ravaged by violence and poverty. In 2014, the rate of homicide
among youths was nearly four times the national average. Although prevention science has shown progress in
identifying promising youth violence prevention programs that focus on the individual-, family-, or school-levels,
progress on community-level interventions has been scarce. Our project involves the implementation of a
community level approach employing the Communities That Care prevention system (CTC), enhanced with the
Walker-Talker (WT) community outreach program (CTC PLUS). While the CTC builds and cultivates social
capital through coalition building and identification and implementation of evidence-based youth violence
programs, the WT model will increase community capacity and awareness to make full use of these resources.
The overall goal of this project is to implement and evaluate the community-level impact of the CTC PLUS
strategy within the context of a multiple-baseline design. Our specific objectives include: a) determine the
effectiveness of CTC PLUS on primary youth violence outcomes (e.g., youth homicides and intentional injury
rates), b) determine the extent to which CTC PLUS leads to proximal outcomes including decreased
neighborhood disorganization, increased numbers of youth served by high quality, evidence-based violence
prevention programs, and decreased risk and increased protective/promotive factors associated with youth
violence, and c) understand the impact of CTC PLUS on aspects of neighborhood and community capacity
associated with youth violence prevention. Three comparable communities will be randomly assigned to
receive the intervention at different implementation starting dates. The intervention will begin in the first
randomly selected community (Community A), while the other two communities (Communities B and C) serve
as controls. The following year, the second randomly selected community (Community B) will begin the
intervention (along with the first intervention community), while the third community serves as a control. In
years 4 and 5, communities A and B will continue implementing the intervention. This design will provide
adequate time (i.e., 3-4 years) for the intervention effect to emerge in Communities A and B. The third
community (Community C) will receive training and technical support for implementing the intervention
following the last wave of data collection in Year 5 (i.e., representing a no-intervention control community
during this funding period). This randomization of multiple elements of the design (i.e., both the order in which
the communities receive the intervention and the timing) strengthens this design considerably because it
increases the number of possible assignments while maintaining the systematic staggering of the intervention
introduction...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10004548
- **Project number:** 5U01CE002766-05
- **Recipient organization:** VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Saba Woldemichael Masho
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1,191,964
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-30 → 2021-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10004548

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10004548, Evaluation of a Comprehensive Community-Level Approach to Youth Violence Prevention (5U01CE002766-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10004548. Licensed CC0.

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