Association of a Park-Based Violence Prevention and Mental Health Promotion After-School Program With Youth Arrest Rates

Source:

D’Agostino E, Frazier SL, Hansen E, Nardi MI, Messiah SE. Association of a Park-Based Violence Prevention and Mental Health Promotion After-School Program With Youth Arrest Rates. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(1):e1919996. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.19996

Introduction

Violence is the leading cause of death and nonfatal injuries in US youth ages 10 to 24 years1 and a primary focus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Leveraging existing community resources to reduce youth violence in high-crime, low-resource neighborhoods needs to be rigorously tested.

Discussion

This prospective cohort study found that adjusted youth arrest rate estimates were lower in areas where a park-based violence prevention and mental health promotion after-school program was offered compared with areas hosting other after-school programs. Results suggest that park-based settings can foster positive mental health among youth confronting adversities common to living in high-crime, low-resource neighborhoods and support growing evidence that leveraging community-based settings through cross-agency collaboration promotes population-level health and resilience. Study limitations include residual differences across matched zip codes, although changes in arrest rates (vs counts) were tested, and models were adjusted for multiple area-level factors to control for group differences. In addition, we did not account for spillover effects and concurrent violence-prevention programs. Parks are abundant in many high-crime settings in the United States. Future analyses could allow continued monitoring of outcomes associated with the program to inform potential for scalability in other high-need settings.