North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence: North Carolina Domestic Violence Enhancement and Leadership Through Alliances (NC DELTA) Community Assessment and Evaluation Project in New Hanover County, North Carolina

Background: An estimated one in five North Carolina women report experiencing violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, putting them at increased risk for serious negative physical, emotional, mental, and sexual health outcomes (CDC, 2011). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funds the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence's (NCCADV) efforts to prevent first time perpetration of domestic violence (DV) as a part of a CDC collaborative called Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancement and Leadership Through Alliances initiative (DELTA). DELTA is a national initiative that funds 14 state domestic violence coalitions to provide support, training and technical assistance to increase the capacity of statewide systems to support the prevention of DV and increase the capacity of local practitioners to plan, implement and evaluate efforts that prevent first time perpetration of DV and promote healthy relationships. In North Carolina, efforts on the local level are concentrated within two Coordinated Community Response (CCR) teams in New Hanover County and Chatham County. Methods: In collaboration with members from EVOLVE! Wilmington, NCCADV and NC DELTA's, the 2011-2012 Capstone team supported the assessment and evaluation of local initiatives in New Hanover, NC. The Capstone team worked to achieve this goal through two distinct groups of deliverables: (1) the community assessment deliverables and (2) the process and outcome evaluation deliverables. The deliverables for the community assessment component of our work plan included: (1a) the Community Assessment Survey, (1b) a PowerPoint presentation of the community assessment findings, and (1c) a fact sheet of community assessment findings. The deliverables for the evaluation component of our work plan included: (2a) process and outcome evaluation toolkits for both the Civil Workplace Summit and Faith Leader Trainings, and (2b) a 5-hour evaluation training workshop. The tools were developed collaboratively with CCR members and designed to increase organizational capacity and increase the likelihood of institutionalization within the organization. Results: Working on the community assessment deliverables, the Capstone Team found that the current survey was too long and implementation plan presented challenges to achieving a large and diverse sample size. Changes were made to revise the survey and maximize community partner resources in the data collection process. Over 500 respondents participated in the community assessment. Key findings from the data analysis included: Respondents recognize that sexual and domestic violence are problems on the county level, but not within their workplace or among close friends; There was almost no variation between the percent of men and women who agreed with domestic and sexual violence myths; There was a large variation in percent of respondents who agreed with domestic and sexual violence myths between education levels; Younger and older age groups had the lowest bystander efficacy; Over 95% of people felt that services should be funded to both support victims and their children and to prevent domestic violence and sexual violence; Zip code 28412 had the lowest awareness of domestic and sexual violence services. Working on the evaluation deliverables, the Capstone team found that three out of the five EVOLVE! Wilmington projects did not have consistent implementation and clear logic models, and therefore did not have the capacity to begin evaluation. Additionally, current tools are long, overly complicated and cumbersome to fill out; tools should be simplified and pared down for intended users. Based on a participant evaluation of the training workshop, the Capstone team found that: Participants' confidence in creating logic models and using SurveyMonkeyTM increased; Most participants indicated that they would use the information from the training to implement changes in their organization. Discussion: The deliverables, in concert with ongoing technical assistance and support from NCCADV and NC DELTA will likely increase the capacity of local CCR staff to revise and refine DV prevention programming in New Hanover County.Master of Public Healt