STRYVE, or Striving To Reduce Youth Violence Everywhere, is a national initiative led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to prevent youth violence before it starts among young people ages 10 to 24. 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. STRYVE’s goals are to:
Increase awareness that youth violence can and should be prevented.
Promote the use of youth violence prevention approaches that are based upon the best available evidence.
Provide guidance to communities on how to prevent youth violence.
STRYVE takes a public health approach to preventing youth violence.
A public health approach to violence prevention is similar to a public health approach
to addressing diseases and other harmful conditions—it applies scientific and programmatic
expertise to preventing violence before it occurs. Communities need a continuum
of approaches to effectively address youth violence, and STRYVE
works to increase attention to the benefits of prevention and to create a greater
understanding of the complementary roles and approaches of multiple sectors in addressing
youth violence. A public health approach places prevention at the forefront of our
efforts to address youth violence and makes research central to identifying and
implementing effective prevention approaches. A public health approach also is guided
by the principle that prevention is best addressed through the organized and integrated
efforts of multiple disciplines, organizations, and individuals. More information
about STRYVE’s youth violence prevention strategies is available
in this STRYVE fact
In developing STRYVE, CDC is working with many experts in the fields of youth violence prevention and health promotion. CDC will continue to collaborate with a broad spectrum of partners to expand and maintain the STRYVE initiative as a national approach to youth violence prevention. CDC encourages you to join with others in your community to prevent youth violence and thereby promote the safety and health of our children, our communities, and our nation.
Helping youth, families, and communities thrive requires information, and that is
where STRYVE Online comes in. It is an ever-evolving resource
that community members, organizations, and leaders can use to develop, implement,
and evaluate youth violence prevention approaches. It is a place to watch real-people
videos, learn from subject experts, and find information resources.
STRYVE Online offers Training, the latest research and data Resources, and interactive workspaces that communities can use to Take Action to prevent youth violence. STRYVE Online also provides guidance and tools that communities can use to build and sustain partnerships that can implement and sustain community-wide youth violence prevention strategies. These resources will help communities develop the necessary broad-based partnerships to prevent violence; to identify, implement, and evaluate youth violence prevention approaches that are based upon the best available evidence; and to inform resource allocation to ensure prevention efforts are prioritized, implemented, and sustained.
STRYVE Online will assist any person or organization interested
in learning more about youth violence and committed to taking action to prevent
it, from the community to the national level. While the website offers information
and training for a general audience, its focus is on resources designed primarily
for key change agents within communities; that is, community decision makers, policy
makers, and leaders.
Community decision makers and policy makers include those who serve a community, with a community being a neighborhood, town, township, city, county, parish, or Tribe. These individuals have the responsibility and authority to make decisions, take actions, issue policies, raise and spend money, receive and use resources, select and evaluate programs, and deliver services for the benefit of the community. They typically are elected officials, appointed agency or institution heads, and their key staff.
Community leaders include people from all sectors of the local community who can contribute to youth violence prevention efforts and health promotion activities that benefit youth, families, schools, and the community. These individuals include leaders within public health, education, justice, social services, mental health, and housing and labor. These leaders may also include representatives from community-based organizations, adult and youth residents, grassroots activists, faith-based organizations, and local businesses.
State and federal leaders can use STRYVE Online to understand ongoing youth violence prevention efforts and to identify how they can support community-based efforts through complementary and reinforcing policies, programs, and practices.
STRYVE Online is not an entirely new creation, but the logical
next step in building our awareness that youth violence can and should be prevented.
In the late 1990s, a series of high-profile school shootings created considerable media attention and public alarm. As the nation took a broad look at the issue of violence in school settings, it became clear that violence among adolescents stretched far beyond the walls of educational institutions and presented a serious public health concern needing increased attention and prioritization. Youth violence not only was contributing to high rates of deaths and injury among young people, but was leaving its perpetrators, victims, and witnesses with permanent physical and emotional scars that were preventing them from achieving their full potential. Youth violence also was eroding community health by reducing productivity, decreasing property values, and disrupting social services.
Youth violence clearly is a complex public health problem demanding a comprehensive, broad-based solution. A major emphasis of our national response to the tragedy of youth violence then—and today—is on prevention. To that end, the White House established the Council on Youth Violence in October 1999 to coordinate the youth violence prevention efforts of all federal agencies. The council, along with CDC and other federal agencies, directed in 2004 the development of a National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center (NYVPRC) as a user-friendly, single point of Web-based access to potentially life-saving information about youth violence for the general public. In October 2007, the mission of NYVPRC shifted to include information and tools for key change agents within communities who could implement and sustain community-wide youth violence prevention strategies.
Between 2008 and 2009, CDC talked with experts in youth violence prevention and community health to identify ways to support the creation of communities in which youth are safe from violence and to bridge and advance research and practice to address gaps in the field of youth violence prevention. Additionally, NYVPRC’s mission and resources for youth violence prevention were examined to determine what more CDC could do to help communities prevent violence before it occurs rather than waiting to respond to violence and its consequences.
The STRYVE national initiative and STRYVE Online are outcomes from this work. Both are designed to bridge gaps in youth violence prevention research and practice and to provide a framework for youth violence prevention and the tools communities need to prevent it effectively. Tools and resources provided by STRYVE Online reflect the understanding that youth violence prevention requires multi-sector partnerships as well as complementary and reinforcing national, state, and community-level activities.
Since its launch in 2004, the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center (NYVPRC) has grown to be a recognized and valuable clearinghouse of information for a broad spectrum of people and organizations interested in preventing youth violence and promoting conditions that make violence less likely to occur. This vital resource remains as an integral part of STRYVE Online. It continues to provide the latest research and resources that help communities prevent youth violence. Additionally, new, interactive resources have been incorporated to better reflect the commitment of the CDC to actively support communities in youth violence prevention through training and professional networking.
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