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Community violence and crime are significant public health problems with serious and lasting effects on young people, families, and communities. This violence and crime have significant ripple effects, affecting not just those who are directly physically injured, but also those who witness violent episodes, those who have friends or loved ones killed or injured, and those who must everyday navigate streets that they know have been frequent sites of serious violence and crime. The current study presents evidence of the impact that a data-driven, collective impact approach - the Communities that Care prevention system - can have on violence and crime outcomes within a large urban, high-burden community. Established as one of the national Youth Violence Prevention Centers (YVPC) funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention is among the first to implement the CTC approach in a large, urban community. The current study's findings show reductions in violence (i.e., aggravated assaults and robberies) in the Bronzeville community, compared to similar communities in Chicago., (© 2024. Society for Prevention Research.)

This study describes a method for using teacher nominations and ratings to identify socially influential, aggressive middle school students for participation in a targeted violence prevention intervention. The teacher nomination method is compared with peer nominations of aggression and influence to obtain validity evidence. Participants were urban, predominantly African American and Latino sixth-grade students who were involved in a pilot study for a large multi-site violence prevention project. Convergent validity was suggested by the high correlation of teacher ratings of peer influence and peer nominations of social influence. The teacher ratings of influence demonstrated acceptable sensitivity and specificity when predicting peer nominations of influence among the most aggressive children. Results are discussed in terms of the application of teacher nominations and ratings in large trials and full implementation of targeted prevention programs.