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Coalitional Capacities and Environmental Strategies to Prevent Underage Drinking

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

Coalitions are the most common platform for implementing community-level environmental strategies (ES), such as media, policy, or enforcement for substance use prevention. The current study examines the associations between two types of coalition capacity (general and innovation-specific) and ES implementation efforts and outputs within 14 intervention communities over a three-year period. Efforts refer to the amount of energy exerted to implement an ES while outputs refer to the materials produced through these efforts. Quantitative measures of capacity were provided by coalition key informants and expert-raters. Additionally, Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) provided proactively to improve the implementation of ES was also examined. Greater general capacity, as rated by a coalition informant, was associated with more ES policy effort. Both expert-rated general and innovation-specific capacity, however, were associated with greater ES outputs. Study results also found that community coalitions that endorsed weaker mobilization, structure and task leadership, (measures of general capacity), utilized more TTA compared to those who perceived their coalition as having greater capacity. Moreover, communities that utilized more TTA resources reported a greater number of successful policy changes. The study supports the need to consider both general and innovation-specific capacity for ES implementation and offers promising preliminary findings regarding the role of TTA for improving coalitions’ capacity to facilitate policy change.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Box G-S121-4, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Jessica E. Nargiso & Karen B. Friend

  2. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Decision Sciences Institute, 1005 Main St, Suite 8120, Pawtucket, RI, 02860, USA

    Karen B. Friend

  3. San Francisco VA Medical Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, 94121, USA

    Crystelle Egan

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, 02881, USA

    Paul Florin & John Stevenson

  5. Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, State of Rhode Island, Cranston, RI, 02920, USA

    Brenda Amodei

  6. Education Development Center, Inc., 43 Foundry Avenue, Waltham, MA, 02453, USA

    Linda Barovier

Authors
  1. Jessica E. Nargiso
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  2. Karen B. Friend
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  3. Crystelle Egan
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  4. Paul Florin
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  5. John Stevenson
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  6. Brenda Amodei
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  7. Linda Barovier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jessica E. Nargiso.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6 and 7.

Table 6 General coalition capacity (overall description: coalitions must develop general capacities to function effectively as coalitions)
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Table 7 Environmental strategy-specific capacity (overall description: coalitions must develop capacities specific to planning and effectively implementing particular environmental strategies)
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Nargiso, J.E., Friend, K.B., Egan, C. et al. Coalitional Capacities and Environmental Strategies to Prevent Underage Drinking. Am J Community Psychol 51, 222–231 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-012-9536-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-012-9536-4

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