Community partnerships organized around schools can be effective strategies for forming meaningful responses to drug and alcohol use by young people.Two such efforts have produced quantitative and qualitative results that reveal how well these partnerships can work when properly supported and organized. Both offer lessons in how other communities and schools can mount effective responses to drug and alcohol use by youths.
Project Northland, a major research initiative, established a multiyear program for youths in 24 northern Minnesota school districts. Aided by a major grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), Project Northland was developed by the University of Minnesota and began in 1991. Its goal was to reduce substance abuse in the class of 1998 through an ongoing intervention program.
Guided by a model that a reduction in adolescent alcohol abuse requires participation by the broader community, Project Northland is based on a behavioral theory that suggests that changing individual attitudes toward substance abuse requires altering the norms of the local community and the school environment in particular. By reducing the community's toleration for drinking, Project Northland's intention is to reduce the incidence of drinking among younger adolescents. It called for improved communication between parents and children about alcohol use and attempts to change how the community and students regard alcohol use.
Beginning in 1991, Project Northland focused its attention on that year's sixth-grade class in the 24 school districts. During Phase One, (ending in 1995), the program focused its attention on that same student cohort as it progressed through middle school. In addition to the curricula and programs for students, it included community and parental involvement in each grade and creation of community forums and linkages with public and private community organizations.
Analyses of the program's effectiveness at the conclusion of Phase One indicated that it had successfully reduced adolescent drinking. When students were at the end of the eighth grade, monthly drinking was 20% lower in the Project Northland districts than those in a control group and weekly drinking was 30% lower.
The Houston Safe Schools Initiative, begun in 1995 with funding from the federal Safe and Drug Free Schools Act, sought to prevent violence, as well as substance abuse, in 17 schools and 16,269 students in one section of the Houston Independent School District. Like Project Northland, it had extensive community and parental involvement with the schools as a means of changing community norms.
The Initiative provided a broad and diverse array of programs and strategies to combat violence and substance abuse, including a Community Guidance Center to provide counseling for children and adults, an alternative elementary school emphasizing structure and anger management, peer mediation, afterschool programs and parent training.
In the first year following its inception in 1995-96, the number of police-related incidents involving students in the project area decreased by 19 percent, and the number of incidents leading to arrest declined by more than 13 percent.
The Houston Initiative also had other benefits. It built trust between the community and the schools by using the school as a community center for a wide variety of activities such as free immunizations, Saturday classes for parents and students, and recreation; after-school to help intervene with troubled youths brought very positive results; and community meetings designed to help the community take a more active role in the schools helped foster greater awareness of youth substance abuse and violence.
Although these two projects exist in geographically dissimilar settings, their characteristics are similar. Both depend heavily on volunteers, but rely on staff support. Both created productive alliances with community political leaders and assembled supportive social networks. And both employed knowledge of relevant research to create realistic models of change and did periodic assessments to build support from outside funding agencies and local public and private organizations.
Longterm success of community-school partnerships such as these depend on how well they meet several challenges, including securing new funding, development of new leaders to replace those who leave, and maintenance of cooperation among service providers.
How well they will continue to meet these challenges remains to be seen. But the lessons learned from both partnerships do offer a guide. Both demonstrated that community-school partnerships can succeed, if they are supported by adequate funding and resources, political and administrative support, cooperative local networks of professional and community residents, and a viable blueprint for reform. Perhaps, the most enduring lesson is that local schools offer a legitimate option as a base upon which policymakers and professionals can craft effective community based prevention programs.
Note: This is a summary of a longer article written by Steven Rathgeb Smith, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Washington. For a copy of the full text, either contact Join Together or Steven Rathgab Smith at:
Graduate School of Public Affairs
The University of Washington
Box 353055
Seattle, WA 98195
Phone: (206) 616-1674
Fax: (206) 543-1096
Email: smithsr@u.washington.edu
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