PARK HILL STRONG
PROJECT OVERVIEW
The mission of the PARK HILL STRONG is to reduce violence among 10- to 24-year-olds in the Montbello and Northeast Park Hill (NEPH) communities. The Center builds upon Montbello’s Steps to Success initiative, which used the Communities that Care (CTC) framework to identify and implement appropriate individual-, peer-, and family-level strategies to address factors associated with youth violence. Moving forward, the Center will serve both Montbello and NEPH, again using the CTC framework as a guide. However, the Center will focus on identifying and implementing community- and policy-level strategies to prevent or reduce youth violence. These are strategies that target risk and protective factors in the civic, social, and physical contexts of communities and have a broad reach to affect widely held values and normative behavior.
The early phases of the Center’s work will focus on collaborating with existing community networks and local efforts to recruit, engage, and mobilize community members in this effort. Both Montbello and NEPH will use surveys and already existing data to develop community profiles. Community members will prioritize the needs indicated by the data. They will then develop an action plan that includes selecting community-level, evidence-based strategies matched to their respective prioritized needs. Examples of possible community strategies include social norming campaigns, community garden projects, and Safe2Tell. A list of strategies meeting the research standards required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be developed and shared with the community. Selection of the strategies will be determined by each neighborhood’s community board based on their priorities and fit. Implementation of those strategies will be guided by the CTC model to ensure that milestones and benchmarks are met. Ultimately, with funding from the CDC, the goal of PARK HILL STONG is to develop a scalable and localized model to empower communities to curb youth violence.
