Tuesday, April 1, 2025
4/1/2025
Kentucky Rape Prevention and Education Program - Sexual violence (SV) is a significant public health problem affecting over six-hundred thousand people in Kentucky. Kentuckians face a higher burden of SV than the general United States population with more than 39% of Kentucky women and 18% of Kentucky men having experienced SV, including contact SV, in their lifetimes (Smith, et al., 2017). Kentucky’s youth and young adults are particularly vulnerable to experiencing SV, with almost 50% of first completed rape victimizations among female victims occurring before the age of 18 and over 82% occurring before the age of 25 (Smith, et al., 2017). Additionally, 12% of high school girls and 5% of high school boys in Kentucky experienced SV in the past year (CDC, 2019). This application aims to build upon lessons learned from CDC-RFA-CE1901902 by expanding the strategies implemented and evaluated using a comprehensive approach across the social-ecological model. Kentucky will work to promote health equity through all prevention strategies and by addressing social and structural determinants of health. Ultimately, Kentucky seeks to reduce SV victimization rates and risk factors while increasing protective factors associated with SV perpetration and victimization. Kentucky’s approach to reducing rates of first-time victimization and perpetration of SV is through implementation of prevention strategies at all levels of the SEM in middle school, high school, and community settings. For nearly two decades Kentucky has implemented Green Dot for High Schools, a bystander intervention strategy that is a named approach in CDC’s Sexual Violence Prevention Resource for Action. Kentucky is implementing Green Dot for High School in every region of the state and evaluating its ability to increase proactive bystanding behaviors and change social norms in implementation sites. During the previous grant cycle, It’s My Space for Middle Schools, Green Dot Community, and community-level prevention projects were added to our primary prevention implementation plan. It’s My Space is a middle school curriculum teaching students about boundaries and how to respond to boundary violations. Green Dot Community is a bystander intervention strategy like the high school program but designed to target the broader community. Kentucky’s community-level prevention work has focused on environmental changes in school settings and social norms change – these projects have been implemented in all middle school implementation sites and some high school and community sites. In the next five years, Kentucky will expand prevention efforts to include work related to health equity and SDOH. Kentucky will start a Health Equity Pilot to trial health equity strategies and initiatives. The pilot will be made up of prevention educators from rape crisis centers selected through an application process. These educators will determine which health equity strategies and initiatives work best in Kentucky’s communities and will create resources and trainings to teach other prevention educators about successful health equity strategies. Additional detail regarding Kentucky’s selected prevention strategies, evaluation of those strategies, and program structure can be found in the project narrative. Citations: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data. Available at: www.cdc.gov/yrbs. Smith, S.G., Chen, J., Basile, K.C., Gilbert, L.K., Merrick, M.T., Patel, N., Walling, M., & Jain, A. (2017). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2010-2012 State Report. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).