By Caitlyn Brown
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recently began to create and distribute programs aiming to help disseminate information to the public. These Technical Packages encourage the community to take advantage of gathered evidence and practices in a variety of topic areas.
This blog covers the third of multiple Technical Package resource posts and focuses on preventing intimate partner violence across an individual’s lifespan. This particular technical package covers the most recent research and provides techniques for professionals and communities that can help to reduce and prevent intimate partner violence. Each report section goes through the rationale for the topic, approaches to implementing the prevention strategy in the community and the outcomes of such techniques. Below, we summarize a few sections of the Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Technical Package.
Teach Safe and Healthy Relationship Skills:
One of the primary goals of this section is to foster expectations regarding healthy relationships primarily by teaching healthy relationship skills. If individuals have not been taught skills associated with emotional regulation, conflict management, and communication within an intimate relationship, there is an increased risk for violence within a significant relationship. This section breaks down two major, evidence- based approaches that could be implemented in a community in order to increase individual social-emotional skills that can reduce the likelihood of violence within a relationship. The OneOp Family Development team has promoted material that aligns with these approaches through our archived webinar, On Solid Ground.
Engage Influential Adults and Peers:
This section of the technical package is aimed at increasing the engagement of influential individuals within the community that can promote positive relationship expectations while also condemning violence and other unhealthy behaviors that may occur in a significant relationship. This section discusses three major approaches that can be implemented through engaging influential adults and peers in the community. Adolescents, especially, tend to mimic behavior and values of individuals that are significant in their lives. By increasing the engagement of influential individuals in the community, they can model the type of behavior that we hope will help to modify the behavior of other individuals in the community.
Disrupt the Developmental Pathways Toward Partner Violence:
Evidence suggests that most of the unhealthy behaviors that are associated with violence against a partner are displayed in childhood. This section discusses the approaches that can be implemented in order to mitigate any developmental risks that can increase the likelihood of violent behaviors throughout one’s life. These approaches include areas such as early childhood environments, parenting skills, educational enrichment with family engagement and treatment for at-risk populations in a community.
The CDC’s technical package is a wealth of information that can be extremely useful to professionals in a community capacity. We at OneOp Family Development highly recommend exploring the technical package to better educate yourself in techniques to help individuals and families.
If you would like to read the CDC’s Preventing Child Abuse & Neglect Technical Package, you can access it here.
Be on the lookout for our future blogs on some of the CDC’s other technical packages.
This post was written by Caitlyn Brown of the OneOp Family Development Team. The Family Development team aims to support the development of professionals working with military families. Find out more about OneOp Family Development team on our website, Facebook, and Twitter.
