The power of process: a story of collaboration and community change

Based on a year-long ethnographic study, this narrative chronicles the planning year of the West Virginia Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being—a collaborative effort to develop a comprehensive statewide substance abuse prevention system. The study provides evidence that the WV Partnership's focus on people- and relationship-oriented processes, rather than only outcomes, was key to its success in obtaining a State Incentive Grant1 1. The State Incentive Grant (SIG) program of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) provides funds to help states and communities implement effective prevention programs. According to CSAP's website, at the time of this writing there are 37 SIGs in operation with over 600 sub-recipients. and laid a foundation for creating a comprehensive statewide prevention system. The essay explores the sustainability and replicability of the WV Partnership in relation to the high human and organizational costs of the ambitious, collaborative endeavor. Using a critical theory framework, the project is discussed as a site of social transformation in the context of economic and social circumstances in central Appalachia at the turn of the twenty-first century. Transformative elements include: (1) countering within-state community imbalances between levels of need and availability of resources; (2) featuring inclusive, community-based, capacity-building approaches to social reform; and (3) challenging recent trends to legislate narrow, quantitative definitions of social science.