Communities That Care® is a community-based process, initiated by the research of Hawkins and Catalano, that engages community members in a broad-based prevention coalition with the goal of promoting positive youth development and reducing adolescent problem behaviors such as violence, drug and alcohol use, teenage pregnancy, school dropout, and delinquency. Communities complete a local assessment of risk factors and resources in their community, and based on a prioritization of risk factors formulate and then implement evidence-based strategies and programs to address those factors.

     In the mid 1990s, the Governor's Partnership for Children and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) spearheaded a comprehensive plan to implement CTC® projects throughout Pennsylvania utilizing a combination of state and federal Title V funds. CTC® sites initially received funding for planning and coalition building and then were eligible for funding to implement empirically supported programs chosen to address the prioritized risk factors in their community.