Health Promotion Practice publishes special issue on sexual assault prevention programs

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC (Feb 10, 2009) The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE), in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Division of Violence Prevention, today announces the availability of a supplemental issue of Health Promotion Practice (published by SAGE) entitled "Evaluating Sexual Violence Prevention Programs." The collection of peer-reviewed articles addresses some of the most pressing issues currently facing sexual violence prevention programs and adds to the important body of research in the field. While most sexual assault programs focus on preventing repeated sexual victimization, the CDC Division of Violence Prevention promotes the adoption of policies and practices that effectively prevent violence before it occurs.

"Sexual violence is a public health burden that drains our nation's human, economic, and health resources," explains Rita Noonan, PhD, co-editor of the supplement and behavioral scientist at the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention. "This issue highlights CDC's work with four programs to prevent first-time perpetration of male sexual violence to not only ensure youth safety but also to avoid long-term behavioral consequences such as sexual aggression."

"Evaluating Sexual Violence Prevention Programs" describes the background, implementation, and findings of four existing programs involved in a three-year CDC-supported empowerment evaluation to build their capacity. CDC chose to work with existing programs around the country because of the growing recognition that most prevention efforts in research institutions do not often get adopted in practice.

Empowerment evaluation expert, Robert Goodman, PhD, Dean, School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, of Indiana University, Bloomington, and co-editor of the journal issue, worked with the programs to help build their capacity using principles known as empowerment evaluation. Empowerment evaluation is "designed to help people help themselves and improve their programs through the use of self-evaluation and reflection."

The project demonstrated that putting program stakeholders in charge of their evaluation design and implementation builds a solid link between program evaluation and program improvement. This supplemental issue of Health Promotion Practice is available free of charge for a limited time for journalists to access at http://hpp.sagepub.com/content/vol10/1_suppl/.

Source: SAGE Publications