Creating a Community Coalition to Address Violence

Abstract

Building a community-wide coalition to address violence evolved out of a five-year federally funded project on abuse during pregnancy. The setting for this coalition building is Haverhill, Massachusetts, a city of about 60,000, located northeast of Boston in the Merrimack River Valley. For nearly eight years, representatives of more than 30 agencies and institutions have been meeting monthly and creating programs and strategies to address violence in homes, schools, and neighborhoods, and designing interventions for children witnessing this violence. The purpose of this article is to describe the process of coalition building and provide an analysis of this work.