Empowering organizations: approaches to tobacco control through youth empowerment programs.
Whereas most evaluations of youth empowerment focus on individual outcomes (i.e., were individual youths empowered?), this article focuses on the program as the unit of analysis and seeks to explain how organizational structures, program design features, and processes lead to organizational empowerment (OE). OE is defined as organizational efforts that generate psychological empowerment among members and organizational effectiveness needed for goal achievement. Case studies of five American Legacy Foundation-funded tobacco control youth empowerment programs were conducted during the first 2 years of implementation. Using an OE framework, the authors assessed program design features of the youth empowerment programs that contributed to or detracted from processes leading to OE. Comparing and contrasting the programs led to the identification of models and strategies that contribute to OE. Ecological influences of the state contexts (i.e., political climate, history of tobacco control, and public health infrastructure) were also examined.
LeRoy
Lisa
L
Abt Associates Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. Lisa_LeRoy@abtassoc.com
Benet
Dana Jones
DJ
Mason
Theresa
T
Austin
W David
WD
Mills
Sherry
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D018672:Community Health Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003256:Community Participation; D005582:Foundations; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008402:Mass Media; D017146:Models, Organizational; D011209:Power, Psychological; D016730:Program Development; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000523:psychology; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D011049:Social Control Policies; D013219:State Government; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000517:prevention & control; D014481:United States