The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #61167

D. Michele Hoover, MS¹, Emilie Phillips Smith, PhD¹, Joanne Abed, PhD², Joan Serra Hoffman, PhD¹, and Candice E. Jackson, MPA¹. (1) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Highway NE, MS K-60, Atlanta, GA 30341, 770-488-1371, mhoover@cdc.gov, (2) Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation, 2101 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 800, Arlington, VA 22201

The Division of Violence Prevention, NCIPC, CDC, funded ten National Academic Centers for Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (ACE) in September of 2000. This initiative, led by Senator Arlen Specter was established to help better understand youth violence, as well translate research into effective prevention practices designed to prevent and reduce youth violence in communities. The Centers represent a new and rapidly evolving approach to translating research into practice by seeking to forge partnerships between universities and communities. ACE has six core objectives to: 1) provide the infrastructure for and conduct interdisciplinary research relevant to youth violence; 2) support the surveillance of youth violence in their specific communities; 3) conduct innovative and relevant etiological work on risk and protective factors in youth violence; 4) develop, test, and more broadly implement effective violence prevention strategies; 5) offer mentoring and training initiatives to prepare professionals from varying backgrounds to address the issue of youth violence; and 6) create partnerships with communities to develop plans to address youth violence. CDC is conducting a formative evaluation of the ACE program to clarify and develop activities that lead to explicit outcomes, as well as inform CDC’s approach to future ACE program development. Phase I of the evaluation will focus on the development of a national logic model. Phase II will develop performance measures to assess the progress of the Centers in reaching established goals and objectives. This presentation will discuss the participatory methods used for development the logic model (s); barriers and lessons learned; the final logic model (s), and future directions for the overall evaluation and ACE program development.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this session, the participant in the session will be able to:
• List the core objectives of the National Academic Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention program.
• Describe 2 different approaches to the development of logic models using participatory methodologies.
• Apply the methodology described to evaluate existing programs and/or develop new programs.

Keywords: Youth Violence, Evaluation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.