Associations between inclusive community coalition leadership and use of evidence-based practices

Community coalitions have the potential to elicit diverse participants' perspectives on complex issues and generate shared commitment to adaptive strategies. Ideally, these approaches have been found effective elsewhere. Despite evidence that leadership plays a generally important role in coalitions, there have been limited prior findings about how leadership may support the use of evidence-based practices. The purpose of the current study was to assess whether three facets of inclusive leadership—engaging communication, inclusive decision making, and inclusion of community residents—predicted the number, reach, and fidelity of coalitions' evidence-based practices. The study context was 64 Pennsylvania and Missouri youth substance misuse prevention coalitions. Multiple regressions were used to estimate the lagged effects of communication, inclusive decision making, and inclusion of community residents on the number of evidence-based practices used, their reach, and fidelity, respectively. Inclusive leadership was positively associated with the number of evidence-based practices coalitions used and how many parents and youth those programs reached, but not with evidence-based practice fidelity. Findings from this study indicate that inclusive coalition leadership warrants the time and skills entailed. Community psychologists are well-suited to support coalitions in this empowering approach to decision making and implementation.