Multi-Level Public Health Resilience-Building Intervention
Hello, I would like to introduce a Multi-Level Public Health Resilience - Building Intervention program I have worked on for my MPH course PHC 6451 - Resiliency Building. This program is a multi-level public health intervention that focuses on the prevention of sexual violence on the University of Florida’s campus.
Sexual assault is an important public health problem. Negative health outcomes of sexual assault include mental health disorders, increased sexual risk behaviors, and substance use disorders (Vivolo et al., 2010). But sexual assault can be prevented through not only bystander intervention but also through affirmative, clear communication of consent between sexual partners.
A reported 13% of all University of Florida (UF) students experienced sexual violence at one point in their time on college campuses (RAINN, 2021). Sexual assault is higher in individuals between the ages of 18 and 24 with 26.4% of females and 6.8% of males experiencing sexual assault (Pereira & Thompson, 2021). As such, this intervention will target UF undergraduate students that are 18-24 years old. Although sexual violence is more prevalent in heterosexual contacts, this intervention will include all gender identities and sexualities as sexual consent is crucial in all healthy relationships. Consent Culture is an intervention developed that aims to aims to dramatically reduce sexual assault perpetration and prevent sexually violent behaviors on UF campus. Consent Culture will be a web-based sexual violence prevention program that aims to prevent sexual violence by targeting each of the CDC’s social-ecological model levels.
The CDC employs the social-ecological model to understand the factors that impact violence and to determine the potential effect of prevention strategies (CDC, 2022). At the individual level, this intervention will increase the self-efficacy of participants as bystanders to intervene in instances of sexual violence and promoting outcome expectancies of intervening. At the relationship level, this intervention intends to instruct participants about determining clear, sexual consent between partners. At the community level, this intervention will collaborate with UF leaders and safety enforcement personnel. UF will assist intervention program staff in disseminating this web-based program on campus. At the societal level, this intervention will strive to advance societal norms that insulate against sexual violence via education of the larger UF community. Additionally, the program aims to increase cooperation of local law enforcement with the UF community to address this immediate public health issue.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, February 5). Preventing Sexual Violence. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/ fastfact.html#:~:text=Sexual%20violence%20is%20sexual%20activity,experience%20or%20perpetrate%20sexual%20violence
Pereira, C. & Thompson, E. (2021, July 30). UF residence halls are most prominent locations for sexual assault on campus. The Independent Florida Alligator. https://www.alligator.org/arti...sexual-assault-at-uf
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. (2021). Campus Sexual Violence: Statistics. https://www.rainn.org/statisti...mpus-sexual-violence
The Social-Ecological Model: A Framework for Prevention |Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC. (2022). CDC.Gov. Retrieved May 26, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/violencepr...ecologicalmodel.html
Vivolo, A. M., Holland, K. M., Teten, A. L., & Holt, M. K. (2010). Developing sexual violence prevention strategies by bridging spheres of public health. Journal of Women's Health, 19(10), 1811-1814. https://doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2010.2311
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