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Changing Community Readiness to Prevent the Abuse of Inhalants and Other Harmful Legal Products in Alaska

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Abstract

This paper presents results from an application of the Community Readiness Model (CRM) as part of a multi-stage community mobilization strategy to engage community leaders, retailers, parents, and school personnel in preventing youth use of inhalants and other harmful legal products in rural Alaska. The CRM is designed to assess readiness to address a single social problem, based on a limited set of key informant interviews. In this study, researchers conducted 32 baseline and 34 post-intervention community readiness assessment interviews in four rural Alaskan communities. These interviews with key informants from the communities were coded and analyzed using CRM methods to yield readiness scores for each community. The aggregate results were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), and the individual community scores were analyzed in the context of the overall study. Significant positive changes in community readiness were found across six readiness dimensions as well as for the overall readiness score. Variation in the degree of changes in readiness across the four communities is attributed to differences in the intervention’s implementation. The implications of these results include the potential for CRM assessments to serve as an integral component of a community mobilization strategy and also to offer meaningful feedback to communities participating in prevention research.

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Acknowledgements

Preparation of this paper was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse under Grant R01 DA015966, A Community Trial to Prevent Inhalant Use in Alaska (2004–2007), K. Johnson, P.I. We wish to thank: Pamela Jumper-Thurman, Barbara Plested, and Ruth Edwards for their guidance on and review of our adapted readiness instrument; the community staff and organizations that helped set up and provide space for the readiness interviews in the four communities; the community members for their dedication to prevention and for giving their time to the study; Heather Coulehan and Dr. Jennifer Norland for assistance conducting the interviews; Casey Shepherd and Lyndsay Miles for their role in scoring the interviews; and Susan Squires, Michael Garza, Jude Vanderhoff, and Chris Bayer for their assistance preparing this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Alaska Office, 4111 Minnesota Drive, Anchorage, AK, 99503, USA

    Kristen A. Ogilvie

  2. Prevention Research Center, 1995 University Avenue, Suite 450, Berkeley, CA, 94704, USA

    Roland S. Moore

  3. Akeela, Inc., 4111 Minnesota Drive, Anchorage, AK, 99503, USA

    Diane C. Ogilvie

  4. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Louisville Center, 1300 South 4th Street, Suite 300, Louisville, KY, 40208, USA

    Knowlton W. Johnson, David A. Collins & Stephen R. Shamblen

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  1. Kristen A. Ogilvie
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  2. Roland S. Moore
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  3. Diane C. Ogilvie
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  4. Knowlton W. Johnson
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  6. Stephen R. Shamblen
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Correspondence to Kristen A. Ogilvie.

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Ogilvie, K.A., Moore, R.S., Ogilvie, D.C. et al. Changing Community Readiness to Prevent the Abuse of Inhalants and Other Harmful Legal Products in Alaska. J Community Health 33, 248–258 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-008-9087-7

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