Empirically guided community intervention for partner abuse, child maltreatment, suicidality, and substance misuse

This chapter describes an initial implementation and evaluation of NORTH STAR, a community-based framework for the prevention of family maltreatment, suicidality, and substance problems. NORTH STAR was evaluated using existing installation-level prevention teams at 24 U.S. Air Force bases worldwide in the context of a randomized controlled trial (RCT). NORTH STAR organizes teams' prevention efforts by (a) providing the results of a needs assessment focused both on problems and risk/promotive factors, (b) prioritizing among problems and associated factors, (c) implementing activities from a menu of empirically supported community-based initiatives for each risk factor, (d) evaluating those activities, and (e) ensuring sustainability through a reliance on preexisting resources. NORTH STAR had promising results, appearing to reduce some problems, especially in communities with more adverse prevention climates. The implications of our efforts for community-wide prevention generally and within the U.S. Air Force are considered.