STOP SV A Technical Package

Resource guide created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2016.

The Technical Package provides five strategies for preventing sexual violence. Within each strategy there are a few approaches to implement the strategy and any available evidence supporting it. See the table below for an overview of strategies and approaches.

  Strategy Approach
S Promote social norms that protect against violence.
  • Bystander approaches
  • Mobilizing men and boys as allies
T Teach skills to prevent sexual violence.
  • Social-emotional learning
  • Teaching healthy, safe dating and intimate relationship skills to adolescents
  • Promoting healthy sexuality
  • Empowerment-based training
O Provide opportunities to empower and support girls and women.
  • Strengthening economic support for women and families
  • Strengthening leadership and opportunities for girls
P Create protective environments.
  • Improving safety and monitoring in schools
  • Establishing and consistently applying workplace policies
  • Addressing community-level risks through environmental approaches
SV Support victims/survivors to lessen harms.
  • Victim-centered services
  • Treatment for victims of SV
  • Treatment of at-risk children and families to prevent problem behavior including sex offending

Using the Technical Package:

  • Each strategy comes with a section on the rationale and each approach has detailed information on the purpose.
    • Understanding the theories that underline each strategy and approach are important so that the most appropriate ones may be selected based on the community's needs and resources. Having access to the rationales may also be useful when proposing a new project to stakeholders or writing a request for funding. 
  • Potential outcomes for each strategy are provided.
    • These may help as you develop a plan to measure the effectiveness of your program. It's important to have reasonable and measurable outcomes in any program and to make sure they are logically connected to the activities being implemented. The list in the Technical Package can help you stay on track.
  • Several approaches may be necessary.
    • Prevention is complex and requires careful design.  It's important to address the specific risk factors present for a community and to reach multiple levels of influence (the Social Ecological Model). Combining strategies and approaches can help reinforce key messages and create a larger impact within a target community.

Considerations:

  • Not everything contained in this Technical Package represents primary prevention. The full spectrum of prevention, risk reduction, response, and treatment is represented. 
  • While not every approach has an evidence base yet, this Technical Package can help in selecting strategies and approaches that are connected to a theory of change.
  • The approaches within strategies are not exhaustive; these may not be the only ways to advance a strategy.
  • While considering the available evidence and research findings is important, it's also very important to think about how a program will or will not meet the needs of your community. Often prepackaged programs will not be culturally relevant and therefore a program will have to be adapted or a home-grown approach will have to be designed.

Additional Benefits:

  • Often we hear preventionists say they are isolated in their agencies and need more connection. The framework of strategies in this Technical Package utilizes a full spectrum of prevention that can allow everyone at an organization to have a shared vision. This helps connect the dots between advocacy, therapy, and prevention efforts.
  • There are many benefits to having your prevention efforts aligned with this Technical Package. Such as having validation for your approach, making the case to stakeholders and other community partners, and strengthening expansion efforts.