Hi Everyone! We’re so glad you joined us today. This is Jennifer Grove, the Prevention Director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. 
And I’m Mo Lewis. I’m the Prevention Specialist.  
Today, we’re going to talk about community level prevention, what it means, what it’s all about.
There’s a lot to talk about, I’m glad we’re having this conversation, Mo. so what we want to do in this podcast is provide some information to help set the stage for the many conversations we plan to have through this podcast series about community-level prevention.
Before we jump into it, can we say why we’re doing this in a podcast?
Yeah! I think a podcast is a good format for something like this, because community-level prevention is a pretty new concept for some people, and can be challenging to think about. It’s nice to be able to talk about it, and not just give people something to read.
Yeah, that’s a good point.  I know it’s something we have a lot of conversations about, so why not let people listen to our conversation? 
So, what is community-level prevention? That’s the big question! We know that the term “community-level prevention” has a pretty deep meaning.  
So, the definition we typically give is that community-level prevention impacts the entire community, regardless of whether they are part of the prevention group or efforts. It also targets characteristics of a community. 
So, say that someone is a prevention educator doing a weekly program working with a group of students in a school setting wouldn’t be community level per say (even though a group of teens could be considered a community). But, if this same group of teens identify problematic policies like their school dress code that discriminates based on gender and race, and if they work together with the prevention educator and maybe parents, staff, and teachers to change their school’s dress code policies, that would be community level prevention – because it impacts the entire school community. All the students are going to benefit from improved dress code, even if they didn’t know that the prevention group existed.
I really like that policy-level example - that broader example of how an entire community in that school can be impacted by these policies they’re creating. 
Thinking about the environment as well – there may be some hot-spot mapping happening, looking at safer spaces v spaces that feel creepy or unsafe, like in school or a community center… and it’s looking at working with the community to change those aspects to make the spaces feel better for everyone. There is work being done around preventing crime through environmental design – which is both an interesting and controversial approach, which we will dive into more in another episode. 
Why do you think, Jen, that community-level prevention or the concept of community-level prevention is hard for people to get?
I think it’s because we use the word community so much! We say things like community-based, community-specific… what is even a community? That’s a question that I have.  What counts as a community?
Yes, we should talk about all of this. I know that we have some definitions and examples that we use, but sometimes we say the word “community” so much it stops having any meaning in my ears. I just say it and it sounds like gibberish a little bit. 
Community-based is just what it says, it’s based within a community – it means that community members are shaping, leading, evaluating, and really owning the prevention work.
Community specific is specific to the needs of a community - their interests, strengths…it’s specific to the cultural norms that exist in the community, specific experiences. 
These are things that usually go together. Usually a good prevention program is community-based and community-specific, but sometimes not. We do like to talk about the importance of prevention work being based in the community and really specific to the community because you can’t really just take a curriculum or an idea from one community and put it into another, right? It doesn’t usually work that way.
There is a program that I like to talk about as an example of a program that’s both community-based and community-specific. It’s called Athletes as Leaders and was created in a large urban area high school in the Seattle area. They are doing Coaching Boys into Men for their prevention programming and they realized they didn’t have a program for athletes in girls’ sports team. And so the prevention educator there worked with the community – the student athletes – to create a program that is really based in the community’s needs and their interests, and really gets at some of those core values that they wanted to work on and change in their community. The students who are part of the sports teams are leaders – they help run the program, evaluate it, make adaptations. And it’s really specific to the community. And the community in this case is athletes on girls sports teams. The have a lot of sports-specific culture that they’re working to identify the positive aspect of and really build those up together. I really like to talk about that as just one example of a way that prevention can be both based in the community and really specific to the community as well.
I’m so glad you used that example, Mo. I love Athletes as Leaders –the program itself. And so, yeah, let’s put a plug in for these great, great programs.
so what counts as a community? I think about community and it’s really daunting! Like, what are we talking about here? A whole city? Yikes. I remember years ago I was working with a group in New York City and they were trying to figure out how to do prevention work in the city – it’s so huge. And I don’t think you can think about the entire city because you’re definitely not going to have enough time, effort, and money to do an entire city.  But thinking about community as being more specific than that - it can be a lot smaller. In fact, being really specific is good when you’re thinking about community-level prevention, because then you know more about the community.
We have a colleague who has done a keynote for us  -an amazing colleague, Dr. Renee Canady. And she  talks about health disparities and health inequities and violence prevention work. And she hs this interesting way of talking about community that I really love. And the way she says it is community is defined more by relationship than radius; its defined more by values than locale, and its defined more by affinities than vicinities.  So, it’s about working in and with a community.  These could be neighborhoods or they could be school groups, civic groups, churches or other religious groups, youth centers, and the list goes on and on.
I really like the way that she puts this. It makes it seem way more doable and it also goes back to being community-based and community-specific as well. We know that just because we all live in the same town doesn’t mean we all share the same values or care about the same things. So, I like this idea about getting really specific about who is your community. It’s such a good example.  OK so now that we’ve talked about all the ways we’re using the word community and what it means; let’s dig more into community-level prevention. There’s a way we’ve been talking about internally here at NSVRC it that I like, which is this idea of stretching to community level prevention. Our co-worker, Sally, even made these great slides where you see people stretching to help us think about how you can get to this community-level prevention.  The reason why we talk about this and the idea of stretching is because hopefully this isn’t a radical shift where you give up everything you’ve been doing and then JUST do community level! That’s not the focus, either. We know that the social ecological model exists; it has 4 levels but not just supposed to focus on one level. We’re supposed to use all the levels of the SEM, or as many as we can. We know that it makes prevention more effective. If you’ve been doing great work at the individual and relationship levels, what can you do to expand that work and get that community-level involved in there too.
Yes, it’s not just scrapping everything you’ve done and starting over, right? No, don’t do that.
Can we just normalize that this is something that a lot of people are struggling with right now?
Yes! It’s a real focus shift for a lot of people. Thinking about affecting an entire community is a big ask. It’s a different reach than wanting to change an individual person’s attitudes, behaviors and values. It is different than building skills for people in relationships. It’s definitely a shift, but hopefully it can be a fun shift or an exciting shift.
If there’s any way to structure your prevention work with flexibility and the ability to pivot, adapt that will be really helpful. I have a great example of where this took place and I absolutely love this program. We have a colleague in Indiana who has done some really amazing community- level work. It’s called the Sidewalks to Sexual Violence Prevention program and it is a unique community-level program that focuses on social inclusion for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.  This program involved groups of stakeholders who worked collaboratively to develop community-wide solutions to increase inclusion based upon unique barriers found in Bloomington, Indiana. Adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities were part of this group. They worked with partners to do participatory social mapping (very similar to what we’ve talked about before with hot-spot mapping) and look at the physical barriers to inclusion that existed in neighborhoods, public spaces and businesses. The data they collected was then used to prioritize and implement solutions to the barriers.  These barriers (access issue – this link sidewalks that were crumbling or inaccessible, potholes on the road, bus stops with no covering –looking at some of these physical barriers to getting places and accessing things) represented increased risk for sexual violence. And social inclusion and that sense of belonging to a community are protective factors that can help reduce risks or create a buffer against risks.  We’ve included a link to this project in the show notes for this episode if you want more information. I really love this example of how someone had these priorities around working with this particular community to prevent sexual violence but also understanding that these barriers existed and needed to be broken down and they worked with the community to do that. They worked with this group of people to do that and it’s really benefitting everyone in the community.
I really like the aspect of bringing humility and learning into it. We don’t always know everything about a community even if we’re part of the community. There’s not really a way to know exactly what the community’s whole focus for prevention is going to be. I like the idea of being that kind of facilitator who shares the knowledge that you have, and says here’s what I know and here’s what we can try together, but what do you see as the issues and the solutions? Being able to really deeply listen and hear from folks what prevention really means to them and what they want to focus on.  This project does such a great job of that.  By getting folks out there to explore the community, take photos, go through the community physically those barriers came right up. It’s a great example.
We are building the evidence base – so it’s okay to try something and have it not work out. This is a process – so we are all learning as we go, adjusting, trying something new. To me this is a helpful way to think of it – it takes the pressure off a little bit. It’s also an evaluative way of thinking. We try something, we test it out and see if it works. If it doesn’t, we tweak it and figure out how it might work better. It’s a cyclical way of doing our programming, and it’s really how we should be doing all of our programming. 
I agree. That’s the fun thing to me about prevention work – we get to try things that feel really exciting and new and we get to see if it works. We don’t necessarily have to get it right the first time.  Maybe part of it is right and part of it is something we could shift and change.  I hope those listening feel that excitement and the freedom to do that, to adjust and try something new , and help build this evidence base. 
If you are thinking about community-level prevention and wondering if what you’re doing is community-level, I invite you to try our litmus test! We like to ask ourselves “Does this prevention work benefit the entire community, regardless of whether they knew about the prevention project?” If the answer is yes, good job! 
Feel free to reach out with any questions, and also if you have ideas of things you’d like to hear more about, things you’d like to talk about, or people you’d like us to talk to, please let us know that as well.