From Community Coalitions to City Hall: Shaping Policy in Chicago With Mayor Harold Washington

Today’s cities are seeking more social equity—a response in part to police violence, pandemic disparities, and the racial wealth gap. Activists, planners, and local government reformers are looking for bold examples of equity planning—single initiatives and multi-faceted equity plans. The mayoral administration of Harold Washington in Chicago (1983–1987) shows how a grassroots electoral campaign combined with participatory policy development produced the Chicago Works Together (CWT) Development Plan—that promoted jobs, neighborhoods, and citizen participation. This article recounts the development of CWT and examines the impacts of CWT for Chicago and equity planning.

Coalition-Committees as Network Interventions: Baseline Network Composition in Context of Childhood Obesity Prevention Interventions

Community coalitions can address local issues with deep, historic, and contextual understanding that enables customized implementation of evidence-based strategies. The individuals within the coalition, their partnerships, and the social context is likely an important component of unraveling the challenges of implementation so interventions reach people in need. We focus on the relevance of baseline coalition-committee network (CCN), the networks of purposely formed subcommittees within community coalitions, structure as one of the moderating, theoretical links between community coalition social networks and intervention success. We explore the baseline composition and characteristics of five CCNs at the beginning of childhood obesity prevention interventions. Using a combination of social network, multidimensional scaling, and correspondence analyses, we examine the structure and heterogeneity of five CCNs, each consisting of a core group of stakeholders in the coalition and sometimes the broader community itself. Cross-sectional analyses are used to examine the composition of coalition-committees related to network density, centralization, hierarchy, and coalition demographics and characteristics. Results indicate that CCNs are patterned in their structure and characteristics, and we discuss whether adjustments to childhood obesity prevention interventions according to baseline structure and characteristics could be advantageous for intervention implementation. Together, these findings can inform future longitudinal investigations into CCN network structure.

What Works in Community-Led Suicide Prevention: Perspectives of Wesley LifeForce Network Coordinators

Community coalitions have been recognised as an important vehicle to advance health promotion and address relevant local health issues in communities, yet little is known about their effectiveness in the field of suicide prevention. The Wesley Lifeforce Suicide Prevention Networks program consists of a national cohort of local community-led suicide prevention networks. This study drew on a nationally representative survey and the perspectives of coordinators of these networks to identify the key factors underpinning positive perceived network member and community outcomes. Survey data were analysed through descriptive statistics and linear regression analyses. Networks typically reported better outcomes for network members and communities if they had been in existence for longer, had a focus on the general community, and had conducted more network meetings and internal processes, as well as specific community-focused activities. Study findings strengthen the evidence base for effective network operations and lend further support to the merit of community coalitions in the field of suicide prevention, with implications for similar initiatives, policymakers, and wider sector stakeholders seeking to address suicide prevention issues at a local community level.

Community Coalition Efforts to Prevent Adolescent Substance Use: A Systematic Review

A systematic review explored the creation and maintenance of community coalitions as effective for alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention in adolescence. Community coalitions influence the implementation of effective and sustainable community-based prevention via infrastructure supporting development, delivery, and assessment of human service issues. For this review, 1,435 articles were identified, most including insufficient detail on the purposes and activities of coalitions or focus on adolescents. Of the 16 studies included, few discussed comprehensive frameworks describing coalition formation and maintenance or measureable influences on adolescent AOD prevention outcomes. Therefore, we propose four organizing principles for building sustainable community coalitions for adolescent AOD prevention.

Labor Rights in the Era of Union Decline

The conclusion revisits the main findings of the book and considers how important weaknesses unions exhibited in the 1950s matter now in an era marked by union decline and conservative ascendance. The 1950s conflicts over labor rights were more than an interesting side story. Labor never completely conquered the Midwest, where most union members resided during these years. Many of the vulnerabilities unions exhibited then—weak or nonexistent ties to groups outside of the labor movement, ambivalent political allies, inadequate responses to employer mobilization—were magnified in the coming decades, beginning with the economic downturns in the 1970s and continuing to the present day. Contemporary fights over labor rights bear many of the same features of the 1950s conflicts. While state labor movements generally developed more sophisticated political operations over time, enduring labor–community coalitions have proven elusive and are needed now more than ever.

The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the City Pilots Served by AB InBev Foundation’s Global Smart Drinking Goals Initiative

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of global health, including efforts to curb harmful drinking. Very little is known about the effects of a prolonged disaster like this pandemic on alcohol consumption, misuse, and related harms, and on ongoing interventions designed to prevent or mitigate these harms. MethodsWe collected information from key informants in community coalitions in each of five City Pilots funded by the AB InBev Foundation that are implementing prevention and early intervention strategies to reduce harmful drinking. Key informants reported how the pandemic has affected alcohol sales and consumption in their communities, as well as alcohol-related harms such as interpersonal violence and drink driving. ResultsWe found that alcohol production has slowed and that sales of alcohol have uniformly decreased. However, the effects of local regulations on alcohol sales in on- and off-premise establishments have been uneven. Early reports suggest that home-based drinking has decreased during the pandemic, binge drinking is still problematic, and that while the prevalence of drink driving is greatly reduced, domestic violence has increased. We also report measures taken by the AB InBev Foundation to support the City Pilots’ efforts to combat the pandemic, which include transitioning in-person prevention strategies to online delivery where feasible, and the reorientation of the AB InBev Foundation’s Community Fund to support local efforts to combat the pandemic. ConclusionsWhile it presents considerable challenges for ongoing prevention efforts that depend on interpersonal contact, the Community Fund appeared to have a positive effect on building community coalitions, bringing new stakeholders to the table, and providing the opportunity for the coalitions to enhance their visibility and reputations in the communities they serve.

Productive Struggle: How Community Coalitions Developed Capacity to Conduct Qualitative Research Through CBPR

There is a lack of evidence as to how the subcomponents of motivation, innovation-specific capacity, and organizational capacity affect community readiness and the implementation of evidenced-based practices. The Strategic Prevention Framework-Partnerships for Success (SPF-PFS) Initiative in Ohio is guided by a collaboration between the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Ohio’s SPF-PFS Evaluation Team, Ohio’s Coaching and Mentoring Network, and community coalitions from 10 Appalachian and/or rural communities. To address the goals of the SPF-PFS, we paired an empowerment evaluation framework with a community-based participatory research approach that enabled communities to take complete ownership of local data and research processes. This approach yielded a pedagogical framework in which all 10 community coalitions were able to extend a quantitative needs assessment by examining local conditions contributing to substance use using qualitative research methods. Members of the coalitions became local leaders in conducting qualitative research, which, in turn, enhanced their organizational capacity. Our purpose is to communicate this successful strategy, along with some challenges we encountered, for developing innovation-specific capacity within the participating community coalitions to utilize qualitative research methods in order to obtain information about the local conditions affecting substance misuse. We describe how an empowerment evaluation framework, when paired with community-based participatory research, can also increase organizational capacity by supporting community coalitions as they successfully leveraged new skills related to strategic planning.