Building Leadership in Substance Misuse Prevention Coalitions: Organizational Empowerment and Its Differential Effects on Skill Development Among Staff and Volunteer Members

Background and Purpose: Substance misuse prevention continues to be a national priority in the United States. Social work scientists and other prevention science professionals need to continue the implementation of effective prevention strategies that lead to healthy communities. Important to the current prevention landscape, community-based coalitions comprised of community members, multisector partners, practitioners, governmental representatives, and scholars are building capacity to ensure sustainability and success of prevention initiatives. Empowerment, a fundamental concept within the Social Work Code of Ethics, is essential to the process by which individuals acquire increased agency over their lives and the systems that affect them. With its focus on social change, empowerment is central to prevention coalitions, which are typically formed by communities to address shared issues like substance misuse. This study was guided by two theories: individual psychological empowerment, comprising emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and relational dimensions; and organizational empowerment, focusing on creating conditions that support individual empowerment and enhance organizational effectiveness. No studies to date have investigated whether dimensions of psychological empowerment mediate the relationships between the organizational characteristics of coalitions and their members’ skill development. Further, we proposed to test if there were distinctions within the hypothesized linkages among the study variables for two subgroups (i.e., member volunteers and paid staff). The purpose was to determine whether hypothesized relationships between organizational characteristics, empowerment variables, and skill development outcomes (i.e., problem solving skills and collaboration skills) differed for two subgroups.

Methods: Data were collected from coalition staff and members (n=368) in February and March 2025 using a web-based, self-administered survey. This survey was part of a process evaluation of a statewide substance misuse prevention initiative in a northeastern U.S. state. The sampling frame was the staff and active membership roster of 20 community-based coalitions, through which a census of each coalition was attempted. The survey instrument was developed using existing, validated scales to assess organizational characteristics (i.e., leadership, opportunity role structure, and sense of community), four dimensions of psychological empowerment, and two skill development outcomes. Structural equation modeling, using multiple-group analysis, was used to examine hypothesized relationships between study variables and differences among the two subgroups.

Results: Model comparison tests indicated that the unconstrained model fit the data significantly better than the constrained model (∆ X² = 49.09; ∆ df = 28, p < .01), indicating distinctly significant paths unique to each of the two subgroups. For example, unique to volunteers, leadership had indirect effects on problem solving and collaboration skills development through its effects on cognitive empowerment. Also distinct for the volunteer subgroup, leadership had indirect effects on skills development outcomes through its effect on sense of community. All significant pathways will be discussed.

Conclusions and Implications: As community change efforts in social work and prevention science continue to rely on coalitions, it is vital to understand the organizational factors that influence members’ empowerment and developmental outcomes. By determining ways to foster empowerment, this research may guide development of tailored interventions to build the capacity and effectiveness prevention coalitions.