SHIFTING THE FOCUS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO ADVANCING VIOLENCE PREVENTION

Objectives and Success Indicators

Objectives

The goals of Shifting the Focus are:

1. to facilitate the state's violence prevention efforts to significantly reduce the incidence of violence over time and
2. to build community infrastructure to help preserve these improvements.

These are clearly goals that will take time. Based upon state-of-the art knowledge in the field of violence prevention, rates of violence appear to be most significantly impacted by sustained interdisciplinary and multi-faceted efforts. Therefore, success can be gauged in the short-term by monitoring the success of activities that aim to improve the comprehensiveness and interdisciplinary coordination of such efforts. To determine the impact of any initiative resulting from improved collaboration, it is essential to measure and track a variety of both qualitative and quantitative indicators. This is also critical for determining what improvements are needed in program content as well as methodology.

Success Indicators

• Increased Collaboration by fostering the creation of new collaborative efforts and initiatives within state government and strengthening existing efforts

• A Focus on Primary Prevention by increasing primary prevention initiatives utilizing a multifaceted range of activities and strategies

• Reduced Duplication by assessing overlap and redundancy and developing mechanisms for sharing information to avoid duplication and re-invention

• Improved Access to Information by consolidating information, sharing data and adopting uniform standards for collection and reporting

• Increased Capacity for Collaboration by providing interdisciplinary trainings and resources for violence prevention to those working in communities and at the State

• Program-specific Collaboration Goals by producing specific program outcomes to increase and improve collaboration

• Local to State Evaluation by creating mechanisms for community grantees to evaluate improvement in their work with state violence prevention activities as the State reaches new levels of collaboration

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Putting Prevention at the Center of Community Well Being
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