The Perth Amboy Community Partnership for Youth: Assessing its Effects at the Environmental and Individual Levels of Analysis

Abstract

This article describes the Perth Amboy Community Partnership for Youth (PACPY), a comprehensive community-based intervention designed to reduce risk factors for alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use among Latino youth. The intervention is grounded in the principles of community empowerment and participatory education, and attempts to facilitate within the community a broad understanding of the societal factors that increase risk of drug use and related problems among young people. PACPY attempts to bring about change at both the individual level and the environmental level within the domains of the school, the family, and the community. The present article describes the types of interventions introduced through PACPY within each of these domains, and examines their impact on individual and environmental changes in the use and availability of tobacco products. We conclude with a discussion of some of the methodological issues that have arisen over the course of the evaluation, and outline the changes that have occurred in our underlying conceptual framework.