Community Violence Intervention in African American Communities: Resilience and Coping among Outreach Workers

Abstract

African American communities are at risk of negative psychological and physical health problems associated with structural and community violence. Street outreach, a community-based social service violence intervention, can build resilience and coping to buffer against these negative effects. Using qualitative case study, the authors explored the effects of street outreach on the resilience and coping of ten outreach workers in two Southside communities in Chicago. Findings from the thematic analysis indicated individual level factors (such as internal state, perceptions, experiences, and future goals) and system level factors (such as family, work, community, culture, and the broader society) related to the workers’ experiences of community violence, street outreach utilization, and resilience. The authors presented these factors using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems framework. Additionally, the workers’ scores on the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 corroborated the individual level factors but lacked the system factors. The authors concluded that outreach programs could help to build the resilience and coping capacity of workers by implementing workplace policies and procedures that promote mental health, trauma healing, and career advancement. Future studies should include quantitative outcome data to analyze the effects of street outreach programming on workers’ resilience.

Keywords:

• Resilience
• coping
• street outreach
• community violence
• structural violence
• African Americans
• outreach workers

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the outreach workers for sharing their experience and the community outreach agency for giving permission to conduct this research study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (U54 MD012523).