Establishing Program Legitimacy in Multiethnic Settings: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's “Fighting Back” Program

While there is a plethora of literature on program models, evaluation strategies, evaluation outcomes, and lessons learned regarding anti-alcohol and drug community coalitions, case studies of implementation are rare. This paper analyzes multiple case histories of implementation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) “Fighting Back” (FB) program with particular attention to issues in multiethnic sites. A common theme in the case histories was minority challenge to the legitimacy of local grantees' (lead agency) leadership in addressing local alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems facing minorities. The local projects adopted a range of strategies to increase their legitimacy with minorities: sharing policy making with or turning it over to minority leadership, recruiting minorities for positions on staff and committees, and subcontracting or making grants to minority-run organizations to implement project activities. These responses reduced challenges to the local projects' legitimacy but also produced unanticipated consequences; most significantly, the nature of project activity expanded well beyond the original scope of FB's mission to reduce demand for AOD. The discussion addresses the implications of legitimacy issues related to political control of FB, allocation of the grant's resources, and how AOD problems and solutions were framed in the context of urban multiethnic U.S. settings.