Meharry Medical College
Juarez, Paul D.
1005 Dr. D.B. Todd, Jr. Blvd
Nashville, TN 37208
Email:
pjuarez@mmc.edu
Center Website
Project Title: Nashville Youth Violence Prevention Urban Partnership Center of Excellence.
Project Period: 9/1/2006 – 8/31/2011
The overall mission of this project is to establish the Nashville
Youth Violence Prevention, Urban Partnership, Academic Center of
Excellence (NUPACE) to promote an academic/community partnership
that integrates prevention science with community action in order to
reduce violence among youth 10-24 years of age in Nashville/Davidson
County TN. NUPACE goals are lo: 1) Bring together researchers,
practitioners, community representatives, youth and policy makers in
an integrated; inter-disciplinary approach to prevent youth violence
in Nashville/Davidson County. 2)Develop an integrated, multi-level,
youth violence prevention strategic plan for Nashville/Davidson
County that utilizes a public health approach; 3) Conduct a
targeted, inter-disciplinary, program of prevention research that
investigates the context, causes and consequences of youth violence
that uses community-based participatory research methods; 4)
Identify, support and evaluate promising interventions; 5) Establish
a County-wide youth violence prevention surveillance system; 6)
Monitor changes in violence among youth 10-24 years of age; 7)
Facilitate communication about youth violence and prevention related
activities to local partners; and 8) Translate and disseminate
results of youth violence prevention research and programmatic
activities to local communities, professional audiences, and policy
makers. The NUPACE will bring together an interdisciplinary group of
investigators with broad and cross-cutting expertise from Meharry
Medical College, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State University,
and the Metro Public Health Department to advise and consult with
public agencies, Alignment Nashville, other community
representatives, and youth to incorporate scientific methods and
evidence-based, practice knowledge, developmentally and culturally
appropriate strategies, and neighborhood specific information into
youth violence prevention surveillance, programming, organization,
and research and evaluation methods. The NUPACE will utilize a
strength-based approach, focus on primary prevention, and employ a
developmental-ecological model that examines youth violence within
the context of family, peers, schools, and community. It will employ
a community based participatory research (CBPR) model that promotes
and supports inter-disciplinary collaboration among academic and
community partners in carrying out planning, research and
evaluation, communication, and dissemination activities on effective
youth violence prevention interventions, outcomes, and best
practices. Three research projects will be carried out by NUPACE
partners that test the developmental-ecological model. The Research
Core will be responsible for developing, implementing, and
evaluating goals 3 and 4 and their associated objectives. The
proposed large and small research studies will assess youth violence
from a developmental-ecological approach that looks at youth within
the context of family, peers, school, and neighborhood. To assess
these contexts, it will use a multi-methods approach (qualitative,
survey and intervention research methods, geo-coding/spatial
analyses, hierarchical linear modeling, etc.). The plan is to test
the important pathways through which the four community contexts
(e.g., family, school, peer, and community) promote or moderate the
risk of youth being a victim or perpetrator of interpersonal
violence. Geographic profiling and spatial analyses will be used to
look at how the relationship between risk and protective factors
found in neighborhoods where youth live as well as where they go to
school relate to outcomes of interventions designed to reduce risk
for interpersonal violence. Additional measures of developmental and
ecological factors including individual psycho-social development,
family, peer, social/demographic, and crime patterns will be
collected and their relationships to youth violence will be
analyzed.
Content Source: National Center for Injury Prevention
and Control, Division of Violence Prevention
Page last modified:
October 01, 2008