The Center of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention at the University of Louisville (UofL) School of Public Health \& Information Sciences capitalizes on a specific window of opportunity-where there is currently alignment of a public consciousness of the issue of youth violence, the availability of expertise to implement a feasible intervention, and substantial political will across community sectors to address the issue. This provides an ideal context for the creation of the UofL Center for Youth Violence Prevention, allowing us to partner with residents and organizations in West Louisville (WL) to develop, implement, and evaluate a community-level intervention to reduce youth violence. To this end, we plan to achieve five specific aims:
AIM 1: Strengthen the infrastructure to support youth violence prevention research and practice at the University of Louisville.
AIM 2: Develop, implement and evaluate a community-level social norming campaign to change the norms of violence among youth in West Louisville using mass and social media.
AIM 3: Document the development and implementation of the social norming campaign to improve replication and scalability in other settings or communities.
AIM 4: Evaluate the relationship between community readiness, community capacity, and the implementation of the community-level social norming campaign.
AIM 5: Facilitate knowledge translation and dissemination initiatives to relevant audiences (i.e., community, local organizations and leaders, youth violence prevention researchers and practitioners, academic peers, and policy-makers) that produce actionable community- and policy-level approaches.
