A systems-level comparison of three implementing agencies and their community partners for a South Carolina program serving pregnant and parenting teens

Background: South Carolina implemented a multi-year program providing support services for pregnant and parenting teens.  Local lead agencies are responsible for coordinating the delivery of services, in partnership with other multidisciplinary community-based organizations.  We examined the existing baseline network structures of these partnerships and the positioning of lead agencies within each system for three implementation sites.

Methods: Using two-stage purposeful sampling, we identified three lead agencies and their self-reported community partners.  We administered a web-based survey grounded in social network and comprised of questions related to number and length of relationships, organizational characteristics, and attributes of trust and value.  We measured individual characteristics of in-network actors, and compared network structure and cohesion measures across the three implementation sites.

Results: Survey response rate was 97.9% (46/47).  Network sizes ranged from 16-19 partners, network diameters ranged from 1-3; average relational distance between actors was 1.7.  Examining two important measures of network-level comparison, one network had a 61% density (ratio of possible to actual links) and average degree (number of ties) of 11.0, while the other networks had densities of 24% and 25%, with average degrees of less than five.

Conclusions: Our study found that the implementing community partnerships for pregnant and parenting teens differed in their levels of cohesiveness and connectedness at baseline.  Successful implementation of programs in communities may ultimately be influenced by the partners’ ability to reconfigure relational patterns to better support program implementation.  Monitoring changes in these measures over time will be key for determining successful program implementation.