A COMPREHENSIVE PARENT-CHILD PREVENTION PROGRAM FOR YOUTH VIOLENCE: THE YEA/MADRES PROGRAM:
Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Nancy G. Guerra (PI), Jessica Borelli & Kirk R. Williams (CO-PIs)
(Graduate Student Researchers: Veronica Valencia Gonzales & Deyanira Nevárez Martínez)
This project develops, implements, and evaluates an innovative youth and caregiver-engaged, community-based approach to preventing multiple forms of youth violence among low-income urban, Latino boys and girls. Building on a long-standing collaboration with Latino Health Access (LHA) in Santa Ana, CA, the project expands their youth promotoras (lay health workers) network into a comprehensive Youth Engaged for Action (YEA) program and extends the effective Madres a Madres promotora-led family engagement program to focus on adolescents and their caregivers. A new component is included in this program that is designed to strengthen attachment relationships. We will conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the integrated YEA/Madres program embedded in a larger 10-year Building Healthy Communities (BHC) initiative funded by the California Endowment (2010-2020) in six Santa Ana neighborhoods with violence rates approximately six times the national average. The YEA/Madres program will be delivered in three of these neighborhoods, with the other three neighborhoods serving as comparison sites. We can evaluate empirically the impact of the YEA/Madres program on individual and neighborhood-level outcomes. The YEA/Madres program will promote youth and parent attachment security, self-efficacy, and anti-violence norms, leading to decreases in individual youth violence and dating violence outcomes as well as reductions in serious youth violence in the community.
ORANGE COUNTY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE DEATH REVIEW TEAM
Kirk R. Williams
(Collaborative Researchers: Amy Magnus & Kasey Ragan)
This project develops a coding guide based on previous research that identifies factors elevating the risk of intimate partner violence and intimate partner homicide. The coding guide is systematically applied to all domestic violence homicides in Orange County from 2006 to the present. The goal is to build risk profiles that would help criminal justice practitioners and service providers identify “red flags” that the violence is escalating to potentially life threatening levels, suggesting points of entry to de-escalate the violence and prevent the loss of life.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SCREENING INSTRUMENT, REVISED (DVSI-R)
Kirk R. Williams
This project began 14 years ago in the State of Connecticut, based on research previously conducted in Colorado (Williams & Houghton, 2004). It involves conducting multiple analyses on the predictive validity of the DVSI-R, yielding multiple publications (Williams & Grant, 2006, Williams, 2007, Williams, 2012, Bell & Williams, 2013, Stansfield & Williams, 2014, Williams & Stansfield, 2017, and Campbell, Messing, & Williams, 2017, Stansfield & Williams, 2018, Gerstenberger, Stansfield, & Williams, 2019, Williams, Stansfield, & Campbell, 2021). These published studies estimated the relation between the DVSI-R and 18-month follow up recidivism data under a variety of conditions and using different analytic methods. Current research involves a comparison of the predictive validity of the DVSI-R using data from criminal and civil (family) courts, and tests designed to determine whether any evidence exists of assessment bias by race or ethnicity. This instrument is now being used to manage domestic violence cases pre- and post-adjudication in Connecticut and other jurisdictions across the country.