Key Prevention Resources

These key resources provide a baseline understanding of the core principles and strategies used to approach the primary prevention of intimate partner violence within a public health framework.

To access a conceptual framework paper and theory of change, empirical research summaries and profiles of innovative programs and practices, see the DV Evidence Project’s focus area on Prevention, to be launched by the end of June 2014. This project of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) combines research, evaluation, practice and theory to inform and enhance the field's work on behalf of survivors of intimate partner violence.

• Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Across the Lifespan: A Technical Package of Programs, Policies, and Practices
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (May 2017)

  This technical package is intended as a resource to guide prevention decision-making to help communities and states stop intimate partner violence before it starts, support survivors, and lessen the short and long-term harms of intimate partner violence.
  *See all of CDC's Technical Packages for violence prevention.
• Connecting the Dots: An Overview of the Links Among Multiple Forms of Violence
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) & Prevention Institute (July 2014)
  This brief shares research on connections between different forms of violence and describes how these connections affect communities. 
• Principles of Prevention
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (February 2011)

  This online course teaches key concepts of primary prevention, the public health approach, and the social-ecological model.
• A Prevention Primer for Domestic Violence: Terminology, Tools, and the Public Health Approach

  Linda Chamberlain with contributions from Julie Ann Rivers-Cochran (March 2008)

  This document provides an introduction to basic prevention concepts by exploring the public health approach, two classification systems, a planning tool used to develop more comprehensive initiatives, and the importance of understanding terminology.
• Mobilizing Communities to Prevent Domestic Violence

  Melanie Shepard with contributions from Deborah Zelli (November 2008)

  This Applied Research document provides an overview of the research on community mobilization to prevent domestic violence, explores guiding concepts and frameworks, and discusses the challenges of implementing community mobilization strategies.
• Preventing Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Against Women: Taking Action and Generating Evidence
  World Health Organization and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2010)

  This document aims to provide sufficient information for policy-makers and planners to develop data-driven and evidence-based programs for preventing intimate partner and sexual violence against women.
• Poised for Prevention: Advancing Promising Approaches to Primary Prevention of Intimate Partner Violence
  Lisa Fujie Parks, Larry Cohen, and Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz for the Prevention Institute (January 2007)

  Includes a discussion of primary prevention of IPV, promising approaches to environmental/norms change, an examination of IPV primary prevention within immigrant communities, recommended actions to building momentum, and immediate next steps.
• Through a Public Health Lens. Preventing Violence against Women: An Update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  Corinne M. Graffunder, MPH, Rita K. Noonan, Ph.D., Pamela Cox, MPH, and Jocelyn Wheaton, MPH for the Journal of Womens Health 13(1): 5-14 (2004)

  Explains how 4 core public health principles - emphasizing primary prevention, advancing the science of prevention, translating science into effective programs, & building on the efforts of others - drive current programmatic activities in prevention.