Academic-community collaboration - An ecology for early childhood violenceprevention

The growing supportive evidence for multi-faceted approaches to violence pr evention certainly demand that multi-agency collaborations will continue to proliferate as communities engage in early childhood prevention strategies . These collaborations often include partnerships between members of academ ia and community agencies that often produce unique challenges and benefits related to diverse experiences, skills, agendas, and practical constraints . This article describes the Jacksonville First and Best Teacher Initiative , an example of one such collaborative model for violence prevention, to il lustrate many of the principles of effective academic-community collaborati ons and lessons learned in addressing the specific challenges of such progr ams.