Federal Resources

OJJDP's Model Programs Guide, an online resource of evidence-based juvenile justice and youth prevention, intervention, and reentry programs, has added three new literature reviews that address risk/need assessments for youth, disproportionate minority contact, and family therapy. 

This set of graphic novels is now available to help young trafficking survivors, ages 2–18, navigate the justice system as a victim or witness. These resources help youth understand the justice system, their rights, and roles of different practitioners. Practitioner and Caregiver Guides and excerpts of support from individuals with lived experience are included.

This sourcebook looks at the effectiveness of four types of violence prevention strategies: parents and family-based; home visiting; social-cognitive; and mentoring. The sourcebook documents the science behind each best practice and offers a comprehensive directory of resources for more information about programs that have used these practices.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works to protect public health and safety by providing information to enhance health decisions, and it promotes health through partnerships with state health departments and other organizations.

CDC’s Violence Prevention site provides a wide variety of materials that can help professionals understand violence and stop it before it starts.

Principles of Prevention is a free, online violence prevention training, available on the CDC’s VetoViolence website. This dynamic and interactive course teaches the key concepts of primary prevention, the public health approach, and the social-ecological model. It also features interviews with leading experts and compelling stories, helps professionals to understand the fundamentals of effective violence prevention, and helps them to become familiar with the growing body of research on what works.

This Web site provides information on and links to school health strategies, research and evaluation tools, Youth Risk Behavior Survey data, evidence-based guidelines for school health programs, and adolescent and school health program resources and tools.

The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a free resource listing programs and policies that improve health and prevent disease.  The Program Planning Resources section of the site outlines the types of steps that are generally used in program planning, along with selected resources that may be useful at each step.

Information from the CDC on the topics of injury and violence prevention, including topic areas, publications, and other resources.

In this article, two experts from CDC discuss a project they conducted in Haiti where they distributed handheld solar lights to women and girls in an effort to increase their sense of safety when leaving their homes to use latrines at night. The researchers also describe the implications of their findings for preventing and reducing violence against women in humanitarian settings. 

This infographic presents information about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and how they affect behavior and health.

This compendium provides research and prevention specialists with a set of tools to evaluate programs to prevent youth violence. The compendium includes more than 100 measures, mostly focused on individuals' violence-related attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

As the Nation's principal health statistics agency, this site compiles statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the health of our people.

Youth violence can be prevented. This strategy provides a framework for action.

This report describes the critical problem of youth violence and provides information and action steps that public health and community leaders, young people, families, caregivers, and other adults that work with youth can take to prevent it. 

CDC has launched the redesigned VetoViolence website. The site features interactive and engaging evidence- and practice-based tools, trainings, and resources to help stop violence before it starts.

“Sexual Violence Surveillance: Uniform Definitions and Recommended Data Elements” includes the latest information available for standardizing sexual violence surveillance definitions and data elements. The use of common terminology and data elements can promote higher quality and timely incidence and prevalence data.

This Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created suicide prevention resources developed from federal and local partnerships. The site contains information about a national strategy for suicide prevention, data and trends, and youth-specific information. 

This report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the total lifetime estimated financial costs associated with just one year of confirmed cases of child maltreatment is approximately $124 billion.

A national initiative to prevent youth violence before it starts. STRYVE's vision is safe and healthy youth who can achieve their full potential as connected and contributing members of thriving, violence-free families, schools, and communities. Their website includes training materials focused on understanding youth violence, the public health approach, and creating a plan along with a wealth of other resources and information.

Data from CDC's National Vital Statistics System for 2006 and 2007 show that rates of firearm homicide were generally higher among residents of the nation's largest metropolitan areas than for the U.S. overall, with rates for central cities often among the highest. Rates of firearm homicide among youth 10-19 years old often exceeded rates for residents of all ages in these areas. In contrast, firearm suicides often occurred at lower rates among residents in the nation's largest metropolitan areas and central cities than for the nation overall. There are a number of effective strategies for prevention, which include programs that enhance youth skills and motivation to behave nonviolently and resolve conflicts peacefully; promote positive relationships between youth and adults; and influence the social, environmental, and economic characteristics of neighborhoods in ways that could be implemented more broadly in U.S. cities to reduce the likelihood of youth violence.

This website offers public health practitioners, as well as CDC grantees, researchers, program evaluators, technical assistance providers, and other decision-makers, resources for making evidenced-informed decisions around youth violence prevention. The free, interactive training modules, case studies, and other resources on the site can help users define the multiple forms of evidence, identify standards of rigor, explore ways to collect evidence, and understand key stages of evidence-based decision making.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control convened a panel of experts in the fields of youth development, violence prevention, and analytic methods to discuss protective influences against youth violence and how these can shape prevention efforts. Work from this panel is featured in a special supplement of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine titled, “Protective Factors for Youth Violence Perpetration Issues, Evidence, and Public Health Implications."

As a member of the global public-private partnership Together for Girls, CDC collaborated with Cambodia, Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to conduct national household surveys of children and youth, ages 13–24, to measure the extent of violence against children. The lifetime prevalence of experiencing any form of sexual violence in childhood ranged from 4.4% among females in Cambodia to 37.6% among females in Swaziland, with prevalence in most countries greater than 25%. In most countries surveyed, the proportion of survivors who received services, including health and child protective services, was ≤10.0%.

Children’s Exposure to Violence, Crime, and Abuse: An Update (PDF, 16 pages) presents findings from the second National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV II), conducted in 2011. NatSCEV II gathered data about exposure to violence among a new group of 4,500 children and youth, and added new categories of crime and victimization. Findings from the NatSCEV II show that 60% of young people were exposed to violence in the past year, and more than one in 10 reported five or more exposures.