Core Public Health Functions & Skills

This involves identifying and understanding the specific issues related to violent crime, gang violence, and gun violence in Vallejo’s hotspot neighborhoods based on the responses from the key informant interviews conducted. Responses also help provide an understanding of the effectiveness of implementation of Project HOPE's grants amongst community partners. In totality, this helps in tailoring interventions and logistics for Project HOPE to better meet the community's needs. 

This entails assessing the effectiveness of the implemented programs following grant allocation amongst CalVIP and Byrne community partners as well as the relationship between these partners and the administration of Project HOPE. Additionally, key evaluation tasks included seeing how the grant money was spent and the impact on reducing violent crime, improving community safety, and enhancing the relationship between Vallejo Police Department (VPD) and the community. The program evaluation itself was finalized through an online presentation to the grant writers, VPD, and community partners. These results were detailed to directly reflect changes from Survey 1 and themed to group similar sentiments regarding perspectives on the effect of the grants. Future recommendations also highlight and addressed the needs of these community partners for transparent processes and leadership at the administrative level for more effective grant implementation and utilization. 

This refers to designing and organizing the strategies and activities that will be implemented to better address the identified community, Vallejo police department and CalVIP/Byrne partner needs. Based on the needs assessment and program evaluation responses from CalVIP and Byrne partners, program planning will be utilized for future referral in optimizing Project HOPE's priority objectives and infrastructure. 

This includes assessing the allocation and utilization of grant funds, ensuring that the financial resources provided through the U.S. Department of Justice Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) grant and the California Board of State and Community Corrections CalVIP grant are effectively supporting initiatives aimed at reducing and preventing violent crimes, gang violence, and gun violence in Vallejo’s hotspot neighborhoods. Evaluating the impact of these funds on community violence intervention (CVI) strategies is significant to understanding the relationship between the police department and the community. Additionally, I collaborated with key informants to identify specific barriers faced for justice-involved individuals, youth, and residents of Vallejo. This envelopes looking at the structure of the grant itself and identifying if there were any barriers to its development or its impact on the program as a whole. 

This involves extracting qualitative and quantitative data from CalVIP and Byrne community partners by contacting and scheduling key informant interviews. Interview questions were created by myself and used to reflect changes in responses from Survey 1/Year 1 of the HECJ Lab Evaluation of Project HOPE. Data collection also derived from impromptu site visits/evaluations where I was able to gather information more directly and naturally from reception and representatives.