Capstone

Abstract

The Redevelopment of Youth Injury and Violence Prevention Program Curriculum

Background: Violence is the third leading cause of death among youth ages 10 to 24, and the leading cause of death of African American youth of that age range. In 2014, 501,581 youth between the ages of 10 and 24 were treated in emergency departments for injuries from physical assaults, and 4,300 of them were victims of homicide. The Center for Injury Prevention and Policy at the University of Maryland R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore aims to decrease the leading causes of admission to the Shock Trauma Center, violence. Currently, the Center has four ongoing programs that address injury and violence prevention in both high-risk youth and in general youth populations in Baltimore City. The foundation of the curriculum has never been formally evaluated and is not in a format that would enable a rigorous evaluation, nor does it have a theoretical foundation. Methods: This project aims to standardize and organize the current curriculum of all four programs by compiling the four programs into modules, streamlining the content, drafting pre- and post- conceptual models for the program curriculum, integrating new material, offering suggestions to better integrate theoretical constructs into the curriculum, and establishing a structure to allow future program evaluation. Results: Components of the original curriculum, in addition to newly introduced components, are now presented in a modular structure and have an intentional theoretical foundation. Specifically, constructs from the Health Belief Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, and Social Cognitive Theory are associated with core components of the curriculum in hopes of establishing permanent behavior changes. Significance: What differentiates this new curriculum from the current program is the more formal incorporation of theoretical constructs and the development of a modular structure that allows for the intervention to occur over multiple days. The ultimate goal is to create a curriculum with a strong theoretical foundation that promotes permanent behavior change with a structure that allows a formal outcome evaluation. ​​​​​​​

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