Frequently Asked Questions about Primary Prevention

What exactly is primary prevention?
The CDC defines primary prevention as "Approaches that take place before sexual violence has occurred to prevent initial perpetration or victimization." This is contrasted with secondary prevention ("Immediate responses after sexual violence has occurred to deal with the short-term consequences of violence.") and tertiary prevention ("Long-term responses after sexual violence has occurred to deal with the lasting consequences of violence and sex offender treatment interventions.")

Simply put, primary prevention is stopping rape before it occurs. However, we see from CDC documents that they rely on the public health model and that primary prevention has a more specific focus; it is a multilayered, comprehensive, population-based approach to preventing sexual violence before it occurs.

How is primary prevention education different than education and awareness programs?
Primary prevention of sexual violence is focused on creating change at all levels of the social ecology (individual, relationship, community, and society) and therefore requires a comprehensive approach. This approach would include measures aimed at changing individual behaviors, interactions between people, community policies, and social norms about gender and violence. Although awareness of sexual violence is necessary, prevention moves beyond that to promote healthy behaviors that would take the place of sexually violent behaviors and also to change minds and attitudes. Generally speaking, education programs focus on teaching individuals the dynamics of sexual violence and informing them about resources for survivors. Primary prevention based education would focus on such goals as helping people build healthy relationships skills and skills to intervene in behaviors that contribute to sexual violence. Moreover, prevention education is more likely to involve engaging individuals in discussions and helping them to think critically about the factors that contribute to sexual violence and how they can change those factors (e.g., helping individuals identify the connection between gender norms and sexual violence and reshape those norms).

Can’t we just get a curriculum for primary prevention of sexual violence?
Yes and no. The essence of primary prevention is creating sustainable changes in your community so that sexual violence is no longer tolerated. The most effective programs will be specific to the community in which they are being implemented or will at least be adapted for that community. Communities have different rates of sexual violence, have more or less of certain risk factors, and have different populations. Therefore, it’s important to assess your own community for risk factors, barriers, and strengths related to potential primary prevention initiatives. Moreover, primary prevention of sexual violence involves targeting individual, relationship, community, and societal factors, which is difficult to incorporate into one curriculum. There are some primary prevention programs that have been evaluated and offer curricula for purchase (see Links page). As mentioned above, they may not be appropriate for you community and it will be up to you and your community prevention partners to determine the applicability of the program and any modifications that may need to be made.

How are we supposed to do comprehensive programs with such a small staff/budget?
Most of you are probably staff from rape crisis centers. Not surprisingly, you are used to acting on and responding to crises, and you probably don’t have enough staff or money to meet even those demands. One of the most exciting aspects of applying the public health model to primary prevention of sexual violence is that it puts the responsibility for preventing sexual violence on the community; sexual violence is a community problem, and therefore the community must be mobilized to change the conditions that support sexual violence. The role of your crisis center is to begin a community dialogue, identify some initial partners, and facilitate the community’s process of developing prevention strategies. Ideally, once the process is started, various community members will be engaged in and supporting the prevention efforts that have been identified as being appropriate for the community, and crisis centers will not be responsible for the bulk of the work.

Click the links below to get more information on Primary Prevention:
Prevention
The Ecological Model
Enewsletter Archive
Prevention Links