Guideline 4

Primary prevention requires that we envision what a world free from violence looks like and that we actively take steps to create that world.

Health promotion moves us from simply acknowledging the existence of violence, and raising awareness about the harm it creates, to supporting the emergence of new knowledge, behaviors, and norms that are inconsistent with the existence of violence in the first place.  
The goal of health promotion is addressing and preventing the root causes of poor health (i.e., SV/DV), not just focusing on treatment and cure (i.e., response and punishment).

Health promotion suggests that governments, communities, and individuals have a responsibility to address barriers to health by developing public policies that support health, creating supportive and healthy environments, prioritizing community needs, and strengthening individual skills.
Health promotion strengthens protective factors, promotes resilience, bolsters developmental assets, and values empathy and connection across individuals and communities.

Let’s Learn Public Health is a YouTube channel that provides an introduction to the principles and concepts of public health.
Health equity is a public health approach that tackles health differences that are avoidable, unnecessary and unjust, and works to improve everyone’s health. The American Public Health Association provides information about health equity in the video What is Health Equity? Episode 2 of “That’s Public Health.”

Risk and Protective Factors

Risk factors  are linked to a greater likelihood of intimate partner violence (IPV) or sexual violence (SV) perpetration. They are contributing factors, but might not be direct causes. Not everyone who is identified as “at risk” becomes involved in violence. A combination of individual, relational, community, and societal factors contribute to the risk of becoming a perpetrator of IPV. Understanding these multilevel factors can help identify various opportunities for prevention.

Protective factors  may lessen the likelihood of IPV/SV victimization or perpetration. These factors can also exist at individual, relational, community, and societal levels.

For example, a risk factor of IPV perpetration on the relationship level is unhealthy family relationships and interactions, whereas a protective factor of IPV perpetration strong social support networks and stable, positive relationships with others.

As prevention staff, it is our job to increase young peoples’ exposure to protective factors and decrease their exposure to risk factors. Risk and protective factors exist both internally and externally, in our relationships with other people, and on larger community and societal levels.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Moving Forward video humanizes risk and protective factors and demonstrates what protects people from violence.
This helpful chart by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center maps out risk and protective for sexual violence factors and social determinants of health along various points in the Social Ecological Model.

Protective Environments, Developmental Assets, and Resilience

It is also helpful to review the research regarding factors that are linked to individual wellness and thriving communities. Different fields of research use different terms, but you will find similarities across these theories and models.

Approaches that operate by modifying characteristics of the community, rather than individuals within the community, are considered community-level approaches. Such approaches can involve, for example, changes to policies, institutional structures, or the social and physical environment in an effort to reduce risk factors and increase protective factors that affect the entire community. Characteristics of the social and physical environment can have a significant influence on individual behavior creating a context that can promote positive behavior or facilitate harmful behavior. For an example, watch this webinar from PreventConnect called Creating Protective Environments for LGBTQ+ Youth Within Schools and Communities to Prevent Sexual & Intimate Partner Violence.
The Search Institute provides practical research and experience from the field by identifying building blocks of healthy development, known as Developmental Assets® that help young people grow up healthy, caring, and responsible.
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process in which we acquire and apply skills to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, build empathy, maintain supportive relationships, and make caring decisions. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), outlines the fundamentals of SEL, including research supporting the framework, on this website page. CASEL has also developed this video titled SEL 101: What are the core competencies and key settings?
Resilience is a person’s ability to “bounce back,” adapt, and transform when or after experiencing trauma. Everyone has resilience, and it is possible to enhance and support youth resilience by increasing their access to protective factors and decreasing their exposure risk factors. Prevention programming that promotes protective factors and resiliency among youth is helping to counteract the risk factors, trauma, and adverse experiences that may make a person more likely to have poorer health outcomes. The Resilience Research Centre carries out research that explores pathways to resilience across cultures. The Centre hosts a resource hub of resilience expertise and tools.