Community as infrastructure
People who know the neighborhood help keep it safe. Give them a real say, pay for the work, and connect their knowledge to the people and resources that can move a plan forward.
Communities That Care, the CCC framework, and community safety councils offer ways to organize that work. Here’s how they fit.
01 / Understand the approaches
A public health approach starts by understanding who is getting hurt, what makes harm more likely, and what helps people stay safe. These three approaches give partners a way to turn that understanding into action. Each has a different job.[9]
CTC helps a community give young people a stronger chance to grow up safe and healthy. Local partners look at what puts youth at risk, what supports them, and which tested strategies fit those needs.[2]
Colorado’s Comprehensive Collaborative Community framework brings partners together around firearm-related harm. They work through the problem, act together, and learn from the results—from prevention through recovery.[1]
A council brings residents, people doing the work, and public agencies together to make a plan. In Washington, councils study local violence, agree on a response, and connect that plan to funding.[5]
The connection: CTC helps partners choose prevention strategies. CCC connects work across prevention, response, and recovery. A council gives partners a place to plan and follow through. Use each for the job it was built to do.
Make sure people and support are in place.
Bring together people who know and serve the community.
Find the risks, strengths, and resources already here.
Choose strategies that fit the priorities.
Do the work, check the results, and adjust.
Use what you learn to make the next round of work stronger.
CTC’s process, explained by ICM. The Center for Communities That Care provides the training and tools to put it into practice.[2]
Get clear on the problem and how it is changing.
Identify what increases harm and what helps prevent it.
Connect prevention, response, and recovery.
Check the results and build on what works.
Bring the results—and what residents are experiencing—back into the next decision.
ICM’s plain-language guide to the published CCC framework.[1]
02 / Learn from practice
Park Hill Strong brought residents and university researchers together to understand what young people needed. That work helped shape a youth-led campaign, school programs that built social and emotional skills, and screening that connected people to support. I co-chaired the coalition alongside Troy Grimes and Dane Washington Sr.[4]
The lesson I want leaders to carry forward: choose the work together, connect the people responsible for it, and give them the support to keep going. That is how a collection of programs can become a shared strategy.
Researchers compared changes across communities. They found evidence of an effect in Park Hill, but not in the second Denver community they studied. Communities were not randomly assigned to take part. That matters when deciding what the findings can tell us. Learn how the work was organized, what it took to keep it going, and what would need to be different in your community.[3]
CTC also has research following young people into adulthood from a separate study where communities were randomly assigned to use the approach or serve as a comparison.[10]
Washington’s councils look at local violence, identify available resources, and listen to people in the community before writing a plan. The 2024 funding notice offered up to $100,000 to form councils and plan, followed by up to $275,000 to carry out approved plans.[5][6]
Bringing partners together is work. Keeping them connected is work. Put that work in the budget.
Soren explains the council approach →PhillyBOLT gives grassroots leaders training, coaching, and financial support. Leaders work on budgets, running an organization, raising money, and showing what their work accomplishes. Jalil Meekins told Next City how that experience helped him strengthen FAST.[7][8]
Trust gets people in the door. Staff, skills, and steady resources help keep that door open. Invest in both.
Hear Jamie Jalil Meekins →03 / Make responsibility clear
Community-led solutions give residents a real role in setting priorities and shaping decisions. Start by spelling out where that influence sits. Use this ICM guide to work through the responsibilities in your community.
Name what needs attention, explain what is happening, and help judge whether the response fits people’s lives.
Be clear about what you can do, commit resources, and make sure your organization follows through.
Agree on the priorities, who decides, who does the work, what it needs, and when to check back.
Carry out the plan, make sure people reach the support they need, and raise problems that partners must solve together.
Show what changed, be honest about what fell short, and bring unfinished business back to the group.
Report back to the people whose lives the plan is supposed to improve.
Write down what the group can decide and what it can only recommend. Name who controls the money and who owes the group an answer. A council does not automatically gain an agency’s legal authority. Build a clear path from the council’s recommendations to the people who can act on them.
Pay people for their time. Give them what they need to prepare and take part. Build in staff support. Research on bringing CTC into urban communities shows why relationships and the barriers to participation deserve attention.[11]
04 / Connect the work to the result
A logic model lays out how you expect the work to lead to a result. Use this ICM example to connect what you put in, what gets done, and what should change. Then check whether those connections hold up in practice.
Local knowledge, paid staff time, agency commitments, useful information, and money to do the work.
Check that partners can provide—and sustain—these resources.
Understand the problem together, choose a response, assign the work, and review progress.
Check that the work reaches the people it is meant to serve.
An agreed plan, funded partners, completed connections to support, and decisions people follow through on.
Track what actually gets done.
Support people can count on, stronger conditions for safety, and less exposure to harm over time.
Check what changed, for whom, and how it compares with where you started.
Use what you learn to change the plan where it needs changing.
A referral has to lead to support someone can actually use. A partner needs the staff, resources, and authority to do what they agreed to do. Check those steps along the way. They help explain why a plan is working—or where it is breaking down.
Track the work, listen to residents, and look at whether harm is changing. Be clear about whose experience you are measuring and over what period. A full meeting and a spent budget tell you something happened. You still need to find out whether people are better off.
05 / Learn from the people doing it
I bring these guests together through ICM so you can learn from their experience and connect it to your own work. Each conversation adds a different piece to the picture.
How communities and researchers work together, and what CTC's evidence can tell us.
Watch on YouTubeTroy GrimesPark Hill Strong leadership, service, and the relationships behind youth development.
Watch on YouTubeSoren TsuiWhy Washington's councils examined local violence before developing their plans.
Explore the episodeMonique WilliamsHow the conditions people live in, local knowledge, and public resources connect.
Watch on YouTubeLaKeesha EureHow community organizing can shape public safety decisions and move government to act.
Watch on YouTubeJamie Jalil MeekinsFAST, Germantown, and the relationship between grassroots work and public decisions.
Watch on YouTubeRead further: Monique Williams’s research on youth and social justice connects this discussion to her academic work.[12]
Work with Jonathan
I help leaders bring the right people together, work through hard decisions, and turn a shared priority into a plan people can carry out. Bring me in for a roundtable, a planning process, or training that prepares your team for the work ahead.
Share your community or organization, the challenge, who needs to be involved, and your timeline. For a speaking or training engagement, include the audience and what you want them to leave able to do.
Sources & further reading
Read the research, see how these programs work, and follow the connections for yourself. The numbered links show where the facts come from. The practical takeaways are my analysis of what leaders can learn from them.
Framework, authorship, and the Park Hill case study.
The prevention process and its research base.
Peer-reviewed study of two Denver communities.
Community leadership and selected prevention strategies.
Council structure, analysis, planning, and implementation.
Historical planning and implementation funding requirements.
Instruction, coaching, and financial support for local leaders.
Jalil Meekins on strengthening his organization's capacity.
Prevention across social conditions, immediate risks, and sectors.
A randomized community trial followed into young adulthood.
Research on local strengths, participation barriers, and coalition readiness.
A dissertation examining youth critical consciousness development.