Violence is preventable, not inevitable. There is a strong and growing evidence base, grounded in research and experiential evidence (practitioner and community wisdom) that supports this fact. The community knows what it takes to prevent violence. Changing the underlying conditions that contribute to violence—in homes, schools, and neighborhoods—prevents violence from occurring in the first place.
Prevention Institute engages leaders from multiple sectors at the local, state, and national levels and cultivates a systems approach to prevention that reduces the need for criminal justice intervention.
Recognizing violence as a crucial prevention issue for health and equity, Prevention Institute has made a major commitment to helping cities devise comprehensive plans and strategies for reducing and preventing violence. Catalyzing national momentum, we launched UNITY (Urban Networks to Increase Thriving Youth through Violence Prevention) with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
PI works with a breadth of partners and communities to develop strategies and practices to keep people healthy and safe in the first place. Below is a selection of ongoing or recent projects.
Since 2005, Prevention Institute has supported dozens of large U.S. cities to prevent urban violence through the UNITY initiative. UNITY advances a public health approach and works closely with the UNITY City Network to develop prevention strategies that address violence before it occurs.
Until now, there has been no basis for understanding how community trauma undermines resilience and mental wellbeing, especially in communities highly impacted by violence, and what can be done about it. With the support of Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit, PI and Dr. Howard Pinderhughes developed the Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience (ACE|R) framework. PI also works with communities, sectors, and policymakers to address and prevent community trauma, and to foster community resilience.
Prevention Institute and the Center for the Study of Social Policy are collaborating to identify the strategic policy, practice, systems, and norms change levers to make communities safer, so that all children have the opportunity to develop optimally and participate fully in the fabric of community life.
With support from the Blue Shield of California Foundation, Prevention Institute’s SAFE project engages leaders in California to envision and design innovative, multisector, health equity strategies to prevent domestic violence.
For more than 10 years, PI and the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA) have brought together this community of practice to strengthen primary prevention of sexual and domestic violence.
Through intensive collaboration with local groups, Prevention Institute has directly shaped how cities and counties approach the issue of violence and has improved prevention practice broadly.
Prevention Institute provides training and technical assistance to the signature violence prevention initiatives funded by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), including the National Forum for Youth Violence Prevention, Community Based Violence Prevention, and the Defending Childhood Initiative.
Prevention Institute is helping the Annie E. Casey Foundation develop a community safety framework that is aligned with the foundation’s principles, priorities, and existing efforts to strengthen families, build stronger communities, and ensure access to opportunity.
Prevention Institute is a member of the WHO’s global Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA), a network of WHO Member States, international agencies and civil society organizations working to prevent violence.
We research and write reports, white papers, fact sheets, opinion pieces, and journal articles, as well as produce videos and podcasts. Here are some of our latest offerings.
This report offers research, analysis, frameworks, and practitioner wisdom to understand the factors in the community environment that support safe relationships and a reduction in domestic violence (DV). It identifies opportunities for 13 sectors to engage in DV prevention, and offers a method for multiple sectors to identify joint strengths, strategies, and outcomes. The paper presents an overarching approach to advancing a health equity and multisector approach to DV prevention, and identifies broad elements and immediate next steps to move this approach forward.
This report by Prevention Institute and the Center for the Study of Social Policy makes the case for action and delineates opportunities for systems, policy, and practice change at the intersection of community safety and positive early child development. For example, emergent opportunities at the intersection include changing norms about fathers and fatherhood through systems and practice change; engaging the community development sector to address housing issues through policies and practices; and building the early education to employment pipeline through state and local policy change.
This first-of-its-kind framework explores trauma at a community level. It explains how trauma is produced not only by experiencing interpersonal violence but also by experiencing structural violence – the harm that individuals, families, and communities experience from the economic and social structure; social institutions; and social relations of power, privilege and inequity that inhibit them from meeting their basic needs.
Decisions about how land is used, by whom, and for what purposes hold immense potential to prevent violence before it occurs, but land use decisions are rarely made with violence prevention in mind. This publication offers recommendations for creating safer communities through a deeper understanding of the intersection of place and safety.
To clarify the relationships among eight forms of violence, Prevention Institute developed Connecting the Dots with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to build a case for practitioners to coordinate their efforts, increase their impact, and work toward preventing multiple forms of violence at once.
We have developed a broad range of practical, free-to-use tools to guide practitioners, advocates, and policymakers in planning and implementing prevention strategies. We also provide services to help you use our tools to create healthy and safe communities.
To help you get to know the UNITY RoadMap, UNITY has created an interactive experience that lets you navigate through the elements, read related articles, and watch video clips to learn more about how to effectively and sustainably prevent violence.
There is growing recognition that many sectors must be engaged to effectively prevent violence, but people don't always know what they bring to the table or how their sector can pitch in. This publication clarifies the roles and contributions of 10 sectors and 12 departments, and walks readers through Collaboration Multiplier, an influential Prevention Institute tool.
This document describes a framework that incorporates public health, law enforcement, social service, and education perspectives in preventing violence. Violence is among the most serious health threats in the nation today, jeopardizing the health and safety of the public. Recognizing that law enforcement alone cannot solve the problem of violence, practitioners have increasingly turned toward a broader, more comprehensive approach.
These profiles, written by PI and our partners, show what community prevention looks like on the ground, all across the country.
Working with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention, Prevention Institute developed five profiles that highlight the importance of community partnerships to advance prevention strategies focused on making Los Angeles a healthier, safer, and more equitable place to live.
The Boston Public Health Commission's Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (VIP) is grounded in community engagement, an essential element of preventing violence. This publication describes the goals of VIP's five community coalitions, and shares advice for mobilizing residents.
Part of the City Voices and Perspectives series, this publication describes the advantages of a coordinated out-of-school-time system and includes recommendations for overcoming implementation challenges.