ByGeorge!

January 2007

Building Safer Communities

By Jamie L. Freedman

Mark Edberg, associate professor of prevention and community health at GW, is working to stem the tide of violence in the Washington area’s rapidly growing Latino community. Funded by a four-year,

$2.4-million research grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he is leading a study to develop and test a community-based youth violence prevention program in Langley Park, Md., a Washington suburb with a significant Central American population. “Youth and gang violence has increased substantially over the past decade in Langley Park and other similar communities around the country,” says Edberg, who has spent his career researching violence, HIV, substance abuse, and other high-risk issues.

Together with two community partners—the Council of Latino Agencies and the Latin American Youth Center—Edberg, assisted by Elizabeth Collins, M.P.H. ’04, is implementing a multi-pronged intervention called SAFER Latinos, a primary prevention program addressing community-level mediating factors that contribute to Latino youth violence.

“Langley Park is impacted by a number of social and demographic factors, including a lack of resources and an influx of refugees and immigrants from Central America,” says Edberg.

He points to a number of “funnels” that contribute to youth alienation and violence in Langley Park: a pattern of “sequential family immigration” that erodes family cohesion and leads to a reliance on peer socialization; a language barrier and paucity of culturally appropriate services for immigrant youth resulting in poor school
performance; low awareness and perception of community support; the presence of several major Latino gangs, including the infamous MS-13; and the integration of violence into prevalent youth norms related to status and reputation.

“Informal local data puts the drop-out rate for ninth-grade Latino boys in Langley Park at 50 percent or more,” says Edberg. “And the percentage of Latino elementary school students receiving satisfactory ratings on state performance measures in reading, writing, and math is very low, well below 10 percent in specific areas. Because their school success rate is so poor, violence very likely plays a heightened role in Latinos gaining status and recognition. Gangs become
a social structure through which young people find a sense of belonging. Violence simply becomes a piece of what they have to do to belong and be known.”

The SAFER Latinos program will utilize a number of interventions aimed at reducing youth violence in Langley Park. Trained Latin American social/health promoters will work with local families, serving as a bridge to facilitate communication between parents and children, as well as between schools and parents. A peer advocate system will be put into place, in which successful high school seniors or college students will serve as mediators at the local middle and high schools, intervening when Latino youth are in trouble or considering dropping out, and will conduct early conflict resolution.

A drop-in center will be established in the community, offering free academic support, recreation, counseling, job training, and other youth services. Ongoing community events will be held and public information disseminated, including violence prevention messages and events designed to increase community contact with support services. The Council of Latino Agencies, a regional umbrella organization, will run a series of events aimed at involving community youth in street theater, musical performances, and other activities that provide emotional outlets and show participants that there are better ways to make a name for themselves than through violence.

“At each of these events, as well as at large community-wide events such as Langley Park Day, we plan to invite social services to set up tables, staffed by Spanish speakers, to make linkages to services and address questions of
community alienation,” says Edberg. “We’ll also be running a media campaign featuring messages on alternatives to violence.”

“This is, above all, a community project,” says Edberg, who came to
GW in 2002 and has a joint appointment in anthropology and in public health. “It’s our hope that this community-public health approach to dealing with violence will help to reduce youth involvement in gangs and violence and ultimately serve as a model for other communities that face the same situation.”


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