Advancing Health Equity to Prevent Sexual Violence - Hawaii State Department of Health Project Abstract Summary The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rape Prevention and Education (RPE) funding has allowed the Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH) to contract with community-based organizations to deliver and implement sexual violence (SV) primary prevention strategies. Notice of Funding Opportunity CDC-RFA-CE-24-0027 (CE-24-0027) builds on the infrastructure established by RPE Cooperative Agreement 19-1902 to support evidence-based/evidence-informed strategies using a public health approach at multiple levels of the social-ecological model to advance health equity and prevent SV victimization and perpetration. In CE-24-0027, the DOH Maternal and Child Health Branch (MCHB) will implement four (4) strategies to include: 1) Building infrastructure for sexual violence prevention (SVP); 2) Developing a State Action Plan; 3) Implementing strategies, and 4) Using data to inform action. The SVP strategies will include a focus on strengthening economic supports, creating protective environments, and promoting social norms that protect against violence. MCHB will continue to partner and collaborate with the Hawaii State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, government agencies, and community-based organizations to encourage “community-level” primary prevention programming, including greater understanding of shared risk and protective factors to advance health equity and prevent all forms of violence. SVP programming will be aligned in the enhanced State Action Plan and a state-level Logic Model and Evaluation and Performance Measurement Plan will be developed in Year 1. DOH will continue to seek opportunities to identify and share data, through partnerships and collaborations, to inform sub-recipient scope of services, identify populations at-risk for sexual violence, and provide recommendations for future programming. MCHB will develop partnerships and procure contracts with sub-recipients to implement programming to provide: 1) Training and technical assistance (TA) for Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting and Family Planning Program leadership to increase understanding of how economic supports for women are related to SVP; 2) Professional development training and TA for public school administrators, educators, and staff to increase understanding of SV and their role to prevent it for safer campus communities; and 3) Bystander intervention training for college students to improve campus climate. Over the course of CE-24-0027, MCHB aims to achieve the following outcomes: 1) Increase capacity for statewide program implementation and SVP; 2) Increased partner support to implement, evaluate, and adapt state- and community-level strategies to prevent SV; 3) Increase reach of prevention strategies that impact Hawaii’s communities and populations with disproportionately high rates of sexual violence; 4) Increase the number of community- and societal-level strategies that promote health equity and reduce inequities in SV by addressing social and structural determinants of health; 5) Increase protective factors and decrease risk factors associated with SV; 6) Increase use of data-driven decision making to reduce inequities impacting populations and communities with disproportionately high rates of SV; and 7) Increased state- and community-level monitoring of trends in SV outcomes and SDOH. The DOH MCHB’s overall, long-term outcomes are to: 1) Decrease rates of SV, particularly in Hawaii’s communities disproportionately burdened with high rates of SV; 2) Decrease rates of SV perpetration and victimization at the state-level; and 3) Reduce inequities in SDOH that impact disparities in SV rates. MCHB will continue to leverage RPE funds and resources to impact all SVP efforts by providing and sharing TA, webinar and training opportunities statewide.
