Building on her 30 years of experience leading community-level organizing projects, Associate Professor Mary Ohmer has seen the results of collective efficacy strategies to lower crime, violence, and juvenile delinquency.
She says: “Collective efficacy sounds wonky, but it is a social process that happens when neighbors trust one another, share norms and values, and are willing to intervene to address community problems.”
Violence in our communities leads to premature death, child maltreatment and neglect, and intergenerational poverty. A strong relationship exists between neighborhood disadvantage and youth violence. Over 1600 incidents of non-fatal violence among youth occur daily, and homicide is the third leading cause of death among all youth and the leading cause of death among African American youth. In Pittsburgh, the homicide rate among young Black men is 36 times higher than the national average.
Ohmer is co-principal investigator with the ReCAST study (Resiliency in Communities after Stress and Trauma), and she is leading a cluster randomized controlled study to test the results of a collective efficacy intervention in 20 Pittsburgh neighborhoods. ReCAST is a large-scale longitudinal study with partners and funding at the local and federal levels, including Allegheny County Human Services, the Pittsburgh Study, the Department of Medicine at Pitt, the School of Social Work at Pitt, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
ReCAST co-investigator, Assistant Professor Leah Jacobs, suggests that building collective efficacy in disadvantaged neighborhoods is a timely solution. “In 2020, the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a national awakening to the reality of punitive law enforcement responses to what are historically based social problems of poverty, unemployment and lack of investment in communities and people.” She points out that punitive interventions are not investments in communities but instead are additional sources of stress and trauma.
Both Ohmer and Jacobs understand the importance of leveraging existing community-based organizations (CBOs) to foster youth leadership and intergenerational collaboration as a powerful anti-violence strategy. Jacobs points out that the ReCAST study is happening at a time when awareness of the need for alternatives to punitive responses has reached the federal level, with grant funds available to rigorously test strategies like collective efficacy versus overreliance on law enforcement.
Community organizations partnering with the ReCAST research team are provided with a stipend from the grant to support a series of workshops where teens, adults and elders from each neighborhood gather for discussion and training. Working together, they develop ground rules for their interactions and learn to see things from each other’s perspectives, becoming more comfortable with each other and overcoming initial distrust. The ReCAST project builds in phases from capacity building, planning, training, and informationgathering to suggest, choose and implement solutions.
As noted in an April 2023 PublicSource article which showcased the collective efficacy workshops in two of the participating neighborhoods, Braddock and the West End, a CBO member shared that the work is “Bringing back the togetherness of the neighborhood. We can be a flourishing community again.”