Did marijuana legalization in Washington State reduce racial disparities in adult marijuana arrests?

Background: One justification for marijuana legalization has been to reduce existing disparities in marijuana-related arrests for African Americans. Objective: Describe changes in adult marijuana arrest rates and disparities in rates for African Americans in Washington State (WA) after legalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana for 21+ year olds in December 2012, and after marijuana retail market opening in July 2014. Methods: We used 2012-2015 National Incident Based Reporting System data to identify marijuana-related arrests. Negative binomial regression models were fit to examine monthly marijuana arrest rates over time, and to test for differences between African Americans and Whites, adjusting for age and sex. Results: Among those 21+ years old overall, marijuana arrest rates were dramatically lower after legalization of possession, and did not change significantly after the retail market opened. The marijuana arrest rates for African Americans did drop markedly and the absolute disparities decreased, but the relative disparities grew: from a rate 2.5 times higher than Whites to 5 times higher after the retail market opened. Among 18-20 year olds overall, marijuana arrest rates dropped, but not as dramatically as among older adults; the absolute disparities decreased, but the relative disparities did not change significantly. Conclusions: Marijuana arrest rates among both African American and White adults decreased significantly with legalization of possession, and stayed at a dramatically lower rate after the marijuana retail market opened. However, relative disparities in marijuana arrest rates for African Americans increased for those of legal age, and remained unchanged for younger adults.

Quasi-Experimental Study of Functional Family Therapy Effectiveness for Juvenile Justice Aftercare in a Racially and Ethnically Diverse Community Sample.

Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is an intensive community-based treatment program designed to reduce youth behavior problems such as violence, drug use, and other delinquency. Although there is evidence of FFT efficacy and effectiveness with predominantly White samples, there is very little evidence with racial/ethnic minority samples. In light of the over-representation of African American and Latino youth in the juvenile justice system, this study examined the effectiveness of FFT and an adaptation of FFT to probation supervision, called Functional Family Probation (FFP), among a predominantly Latino and African American sample of youth returning home from court-ordered out-of-home placements (OHP). Propensity score weighting was used to compare the likelihood of subsequent OHPs among youth receiving standard probation (Comparison group), and youth receiving FFT (with standard probation), youth receiving FFP (instead of standard probation), and youth receiving FFT in combination with FFP. Results indicated that youth receiving FFT (both with standard probation and FFP), relative to Comparison youth receiving standard probation only, had significantly lower likelihood of OHP during the first two months following release, but this advantage disappeared in later months. Youth receiving only FFP also had lower likelihood of OHP than Comparison youth in the first two months, though not significantly. These findings provide encouraging evidence of positive effects of FFT, in combination with FFP or standard probation, among a diverse sample of juvenile justice system-involved youth.

Testing effects of community collaboration on rates of low infant birthweight at the county level.

Interorganizational collaboration has become a popular strategy for addressing population health and well-being. However, evidence for its effectiveness in achieving outcomes at the population level is limited, at least in part due to a variety of methodological challenges such as reduced sample size at the population level, the availability of suitable comparison groups of communities, and study durations that are too short to detect slowly emerging outcomes. The present study addresses these challenges by retrospectively examining the effectiveness of a mature network of community collaboratives, using latent growth modeling of longitudinal change in an archival community-level outcome, low infant birthweight, and propensity score matching of comparison communities. A group of 25 Georgia counties with collaboratives targeting low infant birthweight was compared to a weighted comparison group of counties from other southeastern states, using propensity score matching. We report results of full matching methods and outcome analyses examining differences in change in county rates of low infant birthweight from 1997 to 2004 between intervention and comparison counties. Results indicated significantly smaller increases in low weight birth rates in intervention counties than in comparison counties.

Multilevel measurement of dimensions of collaborative functioning in a network of collaboratives that promote child and family well-being.

Evaluating collaboration between community partners presents a series of methodological challenges (Roussos and Fawcett in Annu Rev Public Health 21:369-402, 2000; Yin and Kaftarian 1997), one of which is selection of the appropriate level of analysis. When data are collected from multiple members of multiple settings, multilevel analysis techniques should be used. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) is an analytic approach that incorporates the advantages of latent variable measurement modeling and multilevel modeling for nested data. This study utilizes MCFA on data obtained from an evaluation survey of collaborative functioning provided to members of 157 community collaboratives in Georgia. This study presents a well-fitting measurement model that includes five dimensions of collaborative functioning, and a structural component with individual- and collaborative-level covariates. Findings suggest that members' role and meeting attendance significantly predicted their assessment of collaboration at the individual level, and that tenure of collaborative leaders predicted the overall functioning of the collaborative at the collaborative level. Dimensionality of collaborative functioning and implications of potentially substantial measurement biases associated with selection of respondents are addressed.

Differential Response and Children Re-Reported to Child Protective Services: County Data From the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS).

Child protection systems that implement differential response (DR) systems screen to route referrals to an investigation response (IR) or alternative response (AR). AR responses emphasize family engagement, assessment of family needs, and service linkage. Usually, AR state-level policy does not require child welfare staff to make a maltreatment determination. Jurisdictions implement DR systems differently, leading to variations in the proportion of AR cases, risk levels of cases served, and the ways families access and use services. County data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System were analyzed for six states from 2004 to 2013 that implemented DR. Variation in county-level AR rates were associated with county-level re-report rates using regression models with risk adjustments for socioeconomic and other county characteristics. Counties had 3% fewer re-reports overall for each percentage increase in AR use; higher levels of AR use are related to lower levels of re-reporting. When county AR and IR cases were analyzed separately, increasing rates of AR were associated with lower re-report rates for IR cases, but higher re-report rates for AR cases. Findings for the AR and IR subgroup must be interpreted with caution as a number of technical factors may be driving these results.

Parent involvement in the academic adjustment of Latino middle and high school youth: teacher expectations and school belonging as mediators.

A path model based in a theory of social capital was tested with Latino middle school (n=195, 58% female, average 13.8 years of age) and high school students (n=129, 64% female, average 16.8 years of age). Most participants (77%) were immigrants (predominantly from Mexico). Questionnaires assessed student perceptions of parent involvement, school belonging, and academic competence. Teachers rated their expectations for student academic attainment and grades were obtained from school records. Perceived school belonging and teacher expectations mediated cross-sectional associations of parent involvement with academic adjustment. Links between parent involvement and academic adjustment were stronger for high school than middle school students. Middle school parent involvement was unrelated to teacher expectations and its indirect effect on school grades was non-significant. Future research should examine the link between middle school parent involvement and teacher expectations and its potential role in increasing Latino youths' school success.

Systems change as an outcome and a process in the work of community collaboratives for health.

The widespread development of comprehensive community initiatives that aim to improve community health is driven by the need to change the systems charged with delivering the services and creating the policies related to a variety of health outcomes. Georgia's Family Connection initiative is the nation's largest statewide network of community collaboratives for health, with collaboratives operating in 159 counties. Data on community context, collaborative processes, engagement in systems change, and changes in programs and activities implemented, gathered consistently at the collaborative level over 3 years, will be used to answer the following questions. How do community contexts and the structure and processes of collaboratives affect implementation of systems change? How do systems changes affect intermediate outcomes such as the type of programs offered in a community? Longitudinal change in systems change and program implementation is described and significant predictors of between-collaborative variation in longitudinal change for each outcome are identified.