The Morehouse School of Medicine

The Morehouse School of Medicine Violence Prevention Coalition Project is an academically-focused, prevention initiative conducted in partnership between faculty and staff at an urban middle school in Atlanta, Georgia. The goal of the project is to link academic performance to cognitive behavior skills through classroom instruction in curriculum-based violence prevention. Morehouse School of Medicine staff has worked in collaboration with faculty, staff and students to identify strategies and initiatives that are conducive to higher academic performance and school-wide nonviolent behavior.

MSM staff will work with the school council and in conjunction with parents to encourage a school climate of high academic performance. In-service training for instructional personnel at the intervention site will be conducted. Topics will include bullying prevention and an adaptation of the Consistency Management and Cooperative Strategy. Parent strengthening sessions, with parents of the intervention students, will also be conducted in a community-centered training.

In previous years, MSM conducted a study in which intervention students participated in curriculum-based training using the Second Step curriculum, behavioral reinforcement and cultural enrichment training. This group also participated in a whole-school intervention. The remaining students at the intervention site were involved in the whole-school intervention only. The researchers randomly assigned students who volunteered for the study into intervention and comparison conditions at an intervention school while a convenience sample of students at a second school provided comparison data.

Analysis of the first study’s data yielded a statistically significant, lower rate of violence in the intervention group for self-reported measures of violence. A gender-specific analysis of motivation to fight, common perpetration, and common victimization showed statistically significant lower frequencies of perpetration and victimization for females in the Second Step plus whole-school intervention. No significant across-condition differences were noted among males. The program yielded a moderate but beneficial effect size for self-reported perpetration for females in the combined whole-school, Second Step and cultural enrichment conditions. Females in the whole-school and Second Step conditions with cultural enrichment and behavioral reinforcement exhibited a large beneficial effect size for self-reported victimization. Researchers should consider gender as a variable for designing interventions of this type.

One goal of the analysis of findings will be to publish information about project outcomes for the edification of researchers and practitioners. In this way, the research community and service providers can learn from experiences gained through implementation of the project. Also, one of the most important aspects of the program will be to document implementation procedures for reproduction and transfer of this technology where it is needed most. Through this process program organizers will help to combat violence from an environmental stand point which could lead to a reduction in violence among youth.

Project Management

Principal Investigator
Dr. James Griffin, Jr., Ph.D.

Program Manager
Casina P. Washington