Prevention Efforts

There have been many successful prevention initiatives that local child fatality prevention review teams have implemented and/or contributed to. Click the link below to read more about these efforts.
Local Team Prevention Initiatives


2019 Grantee Meeting - Upstream Prevention Training

Resources
Focusing on prevention is how your local team will find meaning and purpose over the long haul. The key to good prevention is leadership at the community level. Local team members can provide this leadership by serving as catalysts for community change. As a result of what local teams learn from the reviews of child death cases, local teams are primed to take action to prevent similar death from occurring in the future. The reviews can lead to many initiatives, some are short-term and easy to implement; while others are long-term and involve extensive planning. Prevention efforts can span across the social ecological model, for example changing one agency's practice or policy to implementing intensive home visitation programs for families. Local teams are not expected to design and implement recommendations; reviews are intended to initiate community action. Teams should identify the best way to translate prevention recommendations into action. 

Individual agencies or local team members can assume responsibility to implement prevention initiatives, or chose to work with existing or new prevention coalitions to enact change. Some communities have child safety coalitions, prevention coalitions or active citizen advocacy groups. Local teams can support community partners prevention efforts in a variety of ways, such as providing local level data, making connections with other partners doing similar work, promotion and sometimes even help fund the initiative. In addition, local teams can assist these groups in accessing state and national resources in the prevention areas prioritized by your community.

To assist local teams with the development of these efforts, local, state, and national programs are available. Such programs address specific prevention needs for the health, safety and well‑being of children and families. Available in both the public and private sectors, these programs can be sponsored by religious, community, professional, and/or government organizations. Some are short‑term projects with temporary funding; others are established programs with documented results and proven track records. The links above will take you to fatality specific resources.

The CFPS State Support Team develops tools using the public health framework for prevention to help you identify preventive action that can be taken at all levels of the social ecology. These tools will lead you through the process of formulating effective recommendations, identifying key individuals and following up on recommendations for preventive action. Locals teams can utilize the CFPS Prevention Guidance to develop prevention recommendations across the social ecological model 

In addition, the Children's Safety Network has great resources, prevention efforts, new articles, and a weekly newsletter of hot topics about injury and violence prevention.

Do you have prevention efforts that you'd like to update us on? Go to the Prevention Tracking page to fill out a quick form.