Now is the Time for Injury and Violence Prevention
Though not a new social and public health problem, injury and violence in their various forms are increasingly being recognized as requiring urgent, vigorous and sustained attention. Practical experiences, coupled with scientific discoveries, are helping to enhance understanding of what works and what doesn't, and to stimulate communities to address the problem of stopping violence before it starts.
The PREVENT Program is designed to facilitate the change process by providing education, networking and technical assistance to help individuals and organizations nationwide reduce injury and violence through local, state, tribal and national approaches.
History and Development of PREVENT
Initiated in 2003 with funding from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and sustained with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center developed the PREVENT Program (Preventing Violence through Education, Networking and Technical Assistance) to encourage primary prevention using evidence-based approaches. The PREVENT Program is now housed under the Pediatric Injury Prevention, Education and Research (PIPER) program at the Colorado School of Public Health.
Our goal was to prompt practitioners working in the field of violence to employ and enhance the evidence base for prevention, drawing on sound planning and evaluation methods. The PREVENT Institute, an intensive training program developed by PREVENT, engages multi-organizational, interdisciplinary teams from states, communities, and organizations, and is designed to build participants' organizational and policy-level partnerships to plan, implement, and evaluate violence prevention strategies.
Since its inception in October 2003, PREVENT has trained more than 900 violence practitioners in teams from 44 states in the United States and Canada in the primary prevention of violence. These teams have included members from federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Army and the Indian Health Service, as well as teams from universities, community programs, and state health organizations.
Teams have implemented projects focused on the primary prevention of all types of violence including: child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and suicide and youth violence. These projects have addressed community, statewide and national level prevention plans.