Strategies

We are currently engaged in the development, implementation, and evaluation of three innovative violence prevention strategies identified by our community partners. The YVPC-D relies on a Youth Advisory Council to ensure the strategies represent the values and priorities of the community youth. All strategies also involve students, interns, and early career researchers by providing opportunities for them to learn about preventing violence against youth through engagement with the work.

Youth Leadership, Empowerment and Skill-Building: The Game Changers

The Game Changers combine youth voice with the science of violence prevention to inspire their peers to take collective action. They use digital and social media and host community events to prevent violence, support mental health, and promote positive youth development. The Game Changers ensure that all the YVPC-D strategies are informed by youth.

Connecting Youth to Community Resources through Social Media Engagement and Peer Navigators

A community-supported process that empowers community members to prevent violence against youth by connecting youth that are experiencing challenges to wraparound services that provide support and prosocial opportunities. A team of Peer Navigators provide services to youth and their families, connect youth with local, caring community organizations, and engage and connect youth through social media. Community members and youth can use the Power of One App to help connect youth to resources 24/7.

Enhancing and Increasing Capacity of Community-Youth-Serving Organizations

Customized technical assistance and capacity-building for grassroots youth-serving organizations to enhance their evaluation efforts, embed research-based youth violence prevention practices into their programming, and increase their resources to serve more youth more effectively.

Violence Risk Screening

We use the The Violence Injury Protection and Risk Screen (VIPRS) created by adolescent medicine specialist Dr. Eric Sigel to determine if youth are at risk for perpetrating future violence. We integrate this tool into our strategies to identify youth who may be at risk and connect them to the appropriate resources and supports.