Community Action Program Research Articles

Opinion on ‘The proposal for a Council Decision on the fourth medium-term Community action programme on equal opportunities for women and men (1996-2000)’

Opinion on ‘The proposal for a Council Decision on the fourth medium-term Community action programme on equal opportunities for women and men (1996-2000)’

Community action for cancer prevention: overview of the Cancer Action in Rural Towns (CART) project, Australia

SUMMARY This paper describes the rationale, aims, design and methods of a large-scale community action cancer prevention project. Cancer Action in Rural Towns (CART). The primary aim of the CART project is to evaluate the effectiveness of a community action program in increasing community rates of preventive and screening behaviours relating to breast, cervical, smoking-related and skin cancer. Twenty towns in rural New South Wales, Australia (population 5001-15 000) were selected for inclusion in the CART project. A matchedpairs design was used, with one town from each pair randomly allocated to either experimental or control condition. In experimental towns, community action is being promoted through established community networks and within key access-points (schools, workplaces, commu

European Parliament – Resolution on the evaluation of the third Community action programme on equal opportunities for women and men and proposals for the Fourth Community action programme

European Parliament – Resolution on the evaluation of the third Community action programme on equal opportunities for women and men and proposals for the Fourth Community action programme

Destruction of Gypsy Moth Egg Masses (Using Surfactants, Detergents, Oils or Conventional Insecticides) for Quarantine and Community Action Programs2

A series of studies were conducted, beginning in 1976, at the Otis Methods Development Center, Otis ANGB, MA, and beginning in 1982 at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Beltsville, MD, to evaluate surfactants, detergents, oils, and insecticides as egg mass destruction agents for use in quarantine and community action programs. Surfactants, oils, and detergents tended to be more active when applied in the fall, while conventional insecticides were generally more active when applied in the spring. Some products, especially soybean oil, were highly active throughout the gypsy moth egg stage (July–March). A soybean-oil based product has been registered for this use. A 50% concentration of soybean oil is recommended for quarantine purposes, while a 25% concentration should be suitable for homeowners and arborists.

Community-Based Prevention and the Health Equity Aim—An Ideal Match? An Evaluation of the Kirseberg Community Action Project

This article presents results and conclusions from a qualitative process evaluation study of an alcohol preventive community action project, in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The community action approach has been proposed as a promising preventive strategy in relation to the health equity aim, and our overall goal has been to investigate the tenability of this connection. The starting point in our analysis is the socially stratified pattern of participation in the project. How do we explain the fact that the well-educated middle-class groups and their organizations became the driving force in the community action program, while the working-class majority and the economically underprivileged residents were left out? The excluding mechanisms which were revealed in the study indicate that the community action approach can hardly be seen as a strategy necessarily promoting the health equity aim.

Chicago Influences on the War on Poverty

The most controversial component of the War on Poverty in the 1960s was its Community Action Program (CAP). Controversy resulted largely from the CAP because it employed activist professionals, mandated massscale resident participation, and encouraged federal-agency-sponsored institutional conflict as a mechanism for social reform. These strategies were tested earlier in the Mobilization for Youth program founded in the late 1950s, and in the early 1960s in the Ford Foundation Gray Areas programs and the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency projects. Indeed, the basic models of social expertise and community action employed in those programs were used in Chicago two decades before.

Tourism and the Environment: Challenges and Choices for the 1990s

Abstract The European Commission's fifth Community action programme Towards Sustainability, published in March 1992, identifies tourism as one of five priority action areas. The UK Government organised this conference in London on sustainable tourism on 16–17 November 1992 as one of a series of events during the UK's Presidency of the EC. Dr Bill Bramwell of Sheffield Hallam University examines some of the highlights among the presentations made by leading tourism policy makers and environmentalists.

Tourism and the Environment: Challenges and Choices for the 1990s

Abstract The European Commission's fifth Community action programme Towards Sustainability, published in March 1992, identifies tourism as one of five priority action areas. The UK Government organised this conference in London on sustainable tourism on 16–17 November 1992 as one of a series of events during the UK's Presidency of the EC. Dr Bill Bramwell of Sheffield Hallam University examines some of the highlights among the presentations made by leading tourism policy makers and environmentalists.

Book reviews

Journal Article Book reviews Get access Insect and rodent control through environmental management: a community action programme. World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme. Price: Sw. fr. 90; price in developing countries Sw. fr. 63. Jo Lines Jo Lines Urban Health Programme London School of Hygiene and Tropical MedicineUK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Health Policy and Planning, Volume 7, Issue 3, September 1992, Pages 308–310, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/7.3.308 Published: 01 September 1992

“JUST WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE”:

This article offers a reconceptualization of “the political” from the standpoint of women working in and for low-income neighborhoods, with special emphasis on the contradictions between their actions as community workers and their understandings of the political aspects of their work. The author also examines how their gender and race identity influenced their political consciousness and practice. The date are drawn from in-depth interviews with forty-two perdominantly African American and Puerto Rican women from New York City and Philadelphia who were hired in community action programs established by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

The Community-Centered Model: A Garden-Variety Approach or a Radical Transformation of Community Practice?

Some of the most exciting and innovative developments in community practice have taken place recently not in Chicago or New York, but across the border, in Quebec, Canada. The Local Community Service Centers there evoke comparisons with both the settlement houses of the 19th century and the community action programs of the 1960s. They also incorporate features that are unique to Quebec. Although they vary considerably among themselves, they share a distinctive philosophy and organizational framework. The use of multidisciplinary teams and social and community networks, user participation in policy and service delivery, and egalitarianism in the workplace are features of this model. Also, the Local Community Service Centers are based on the concepts of universality and prevention. This research, carried out over a 2-year period, including interviews with people closely identified with the Local Community Service Centers, provides an overview of the community-centered model and its implementation.

An evaluated community action project on alcohol.

This article reports outcomes of an evaluated community action program directed toward alcohol problem prevention. In a quasi-experimental design, change was monitored in six cities--two cities with an alcohol-focused community organizer and media campaign, two cities with the media campaign only and two reference cities. The community organizers worked with a local alcohol coordinating committee and other local organizations. They focused on alcohol availability (including the promotion of nonalcoholic beverages), advertising and, to a lesser extent, pricing policies. The media campaign focused on reducing the large-quantity drinking of young men, and generated considerable controversy. Before and after surveys of the general population were carried out to evaluate the outcome of the project. Support for control policies on advertising, availability and price held steady in the treatment communities but dropped in the reference communities. The perception of alcohol being essential to entertaining and as being relatively innocuous decreased significantly in the community-action cities. The project thus appears to have met its objectives in these areas, although primarily by stemming the national trend toward greater support for liberalization.

Cancer Mortality Trends in Sweden 1960–1986

Time-related trends in age-standardized cancer mortality have been suggested to be the best single measure of the progress--or lack of progress--in cancer control measures. The paper presents data on trends in Sweden during 1960-1986. From the middle of the 1970s, total cancer mortality decreased significantly among both males and females. The estimated annual decrease between 1975 and 1986 was 0.5-1.2%. Current Swedish trends are thus in keeping with the goal stated in the European Community's action programme 'Europe against cancer': a 10-15% decrease in total age-standardized cancer mortality by the year 2000. This goal might even be too conservative, because most of the cancer control measures in 'Europe against cancer' will not be able to enhance the current downward trends until the early 1990s.

Feeding the Hungry with Surplus Commodities

Since January 1982, the federal government has released three and three quarter billion pounds of surplus food valued at $4.5 billion for distribution to the needy.I The combined work of more than twenty-thousand church groups, food banks, community action programs, soup kitchens, food pantries, and civic clubs across the country has helped deliver direct food assistance to as many as twenty million people during this period. The federal plan to distribute surplus commodities resulted from the confluence of several disparate developments: unprecedentedly high levels of government dairy holdings; urgent indications that the problem of hunger was rapidly increasing; and a decision by the Reagan administration to curtail the growth of (or indeed cut) federally sponsored food and nutrition programs. In addition, the new federal initiative coincided with the administration's commitment to limit the size of government and promote greater reliance on the private sector and charities. The federal government succeeded in distributing significant surpluses to needy families and households and has managed to avoid creating government bureaucracies to handle direct service delivery. In the first four years of the program it re-

Parental leave–time for action?

Abstract In February 1981 the European Parliament in a resolution on the position of women in the European Communities recommended some action towards securing rights to parental leave and leave for family reasons.1 The new Community action programme on the promotion of equal opportunities for women accordingly provides2 that the Commission “will draft a Community legal instrument to promote parental leave and leave for family reasons while maintaining and extending existing public childcare facilities and services.” As a result the draft directive on Parental Leave and Leave for Family Reasons was published late in 1983.3 This was followed by an amended draft in late 1984.4

Economic Conditions, Neighborhood Organization, and Urban Crime

Analyses of neighborhoods and their role in urban decline and revival, and mainstream sociological theories of crime, have focused attention on neighborhood crime and crime control patterns. Although much has been learned from such work, the effects of economic change on neighborhood social organization have not been taken into account. For example, poor local economic conditions and inadequate participation in the labor market can both cause and result from social disruption. The Vera Institute of Justice recently conducted a study of the effects of metropolitan labor markets and housing patterns on high-crime neighborhoods. Survey and ethnographic research among three Brooklyn, New York, neighborhoods indicated that persistent unemployment among adult residents limited the development of stable households and youth employment opportunities. The resulting lack of informal social controls contributed to the persistence of crime in some poor urban neighborhoods. Property crime, drug sales, and other illegal activities provided income to youths in neighborhoods where legitimate employment options were scarce or provided low wages and sporadic hours. Public policy on crime control in poor neighborhoods has concentrated on providing delinquents with vocational training. The results have not been encouraging, however. Community action programs, inspired by the Mobilization for Youth program, attempted more profound social reforms and met with varying degrees of success.

The Effectiveness of Family Planning Clinics in Serving Adolescents

Data from surveys conducted by The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) in 1981 have been used to create three indicators of the effectiveness of family planning clinics in serving teenagers: the mean delay between first intercourse and first clinic visit (which for teenage clinic patients is 13.2 months); teenage patient retention (67 percent; and the average excess of patient satisfaction over dissatisfaction with clinic policies and services (33 percent). Clinics run by Planned Parenthood are more effective than other types of facility, according to the mean delay indicator, whereas other clinics, such as those associated with community action programs and neighborhood health centers, rank highest in levels of patient satisfaction and patient retention. All three measures indicate that clinics serving 1,000-2,499 family planning patients per year are more effective in serving teenagers than either smaller or larger clinics, and that nonmetropolitan clinics are more effective in providing services than those in cities. Regression analysis shows that clinic administrators might take a number of actions to shorten the mean delay among teenagers between first intercourse and first clinic visit. These include offering community education programs for teenagers, enlisting the support of local churches, developing relationships with local youth groups, opening the clinic during evenings and weekends, accepting more teenagers as walk-in patients and locating a clinic in or near neighborhoods where many teenagers live. Two of the same factors--developing an active relationship with youth groups and opening the clinic to teenagers on evenings and weekends--were also found to be particularly effective in keeping teenagers as clinic patients.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Community action by the urban poor: Democratic involvement, community self-help or a means of social control?

This is the first of two papers, in which we examine the nature and effectiveness of formal channels for encouraging community action and participation among low-income groups in Bogotá (Columbia), Mexico City (Mexico) and Valencia (Venezuela). We are concerned with the forms of community participation among the poor, how demands are channelled to the state, the formal organization of community links with the state, and the origins of community action programmes. Organizations to facilitate popular participation in barrio upgrading have existed since the late 1950s, most of which have been imposed from the top down. We argue that the poor have derived few benefits from these government-inspired organizations although they have sometimes given resources to local communities for the first time. The primary purpose behind these organizations is to legitimate the political system and to encourage compliance with urban policy. Greater power over decision-making has not increased among local groups.

The role of Asian women in national development efforts

The article describes the origin, structure, and functions of the Asian Women's Institute as an international cooperative effort by nationals in Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, India, Japan and Korea to improve the status of women. Nine women's studies centers located at nine women's colleges and universities are described, showing how research, educational efforts, and community action programs are carried out in the specific culture represented. International cooperation among the centers is facilitated by an international AWI office with a coordinator, a regular publication of activities, and periodic Asian conferences by scholars from participating countries and the United States. The emphasis in all these studies centers and conferences is on the role women can play in improving their status and in assisting in national development.

Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty

When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared metaphorical war on poverty in 1964, he set in motion an important, complex, and controversial phase in the history of reform in the United States, whose shockwaves were still being felt in the early 1980s, a time of counterreformation. Although poverty reform in the 1960s influenced the historical profession no less than some others-in the rise of social history, for example-historians concentrated their research efforts on the more distant past. Analysis of the history, workings, consequences, and lessons of the War on Poverty remained largely the business of social scientists, who turned it into a sizable industry. The passage of time and the growing availability of primary sources now invite historical investigation, which has no more apposite starting point than the War on Poverty's genesis. Social scientists explain the War on Poverty's creation in essentially three different ways. Daniel P. Moynihan in his Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding does not treat motive systematically or explicitly, but he builds a powerful implicit argument that the War on Poverty grew out of the rising influence of social science itself. In particular, Moynihan attributes the Community Action Program, which became central to the War on Poverty, to reform-minded, though unscientific, sociologists. A second school of thought emphasizes interest groups and political calculation. Among those who take this approach, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward have probably been most widely read. President John F. Kennedy and President Johnson, they argue, launched the War on Poverty in order to attract a high percentage of black votes in the 1964 election. Third, the War on Poverty's birth has been explained through the cyclical theory of reform. After a period of dormancy, James Sundquist maintains, the reform impulse once again swept through the American political system, bringing with it a national effort to eradicate poverty. '