The guiding purpose of the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence (DCADV)’s Preventing Intimate Partner Violence and Improving Health Equity in Delaware Through DELTA AHEAD Project is to promote prevention of intimate partner violence (IPV) in order to bring about decreases in IPV risk factors and increases in IPV protective factors through strategic data-driven planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of community- and societal-level evidence-informed programming. The project seeks to facilitate increased use of evaluation and surveillance data at the state and local levels to further understand the potential impacts of community- and societal-level focused prevention programs and policy efforts being implemented in Delaware. DCADV, in partnership with Delaware’s Coordinated Community Response (CCR) team, will engage in implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement of 3 evidence-informed program/policy efforts and will actively engage as a critical partner in national IPV prevention efforts to build and sustain the IPV prevention field.
DCADV’s overall goal of the project is to reduce rates of intimate partner violence and improve health equity through strengthening DE’s collaborative IPV/SV prevention infrastructure and sustained implementation of primary prevention approaches designed to address state and community-specific risk and protective factors for IPV. Anticipated project outcomes include: increased collaboration and alignment among statewide and community partners; increased availability, utilization, and monitoring of state- and community-level data related to IPV, other forms of violence, and social determinants of health (SDoH); increased capacity within DCADV staff and board, State Leadership Team (SLT) members, and the CCR related to primary prevention concepts and approaches and risk/protective factors for IPV; increased availability of program/policy evaluation data to inform improvements and adaptations to implementation; increased participation of DE’s prevention community in regional and national shared learning of IPV primary prevention best practices; and improved protective factors and decreased risk factors for IPV through implementation and evaluation of 3 program/policy efforts within 3 focus areas: Creating Protective Environments; Engaging Influential Adults and Peers; and Strengthening Economic Supports for Families.
DCADV strives to integrate primary prevention into state planning and infrastructure to ensure long-term sustainability of prevention efforts and to align project efforts with complementary efforts in Delaware aimed at addressing shared social and structural determinants of health in order to maximize collective impact and improve the health, safety, and well-being of all Delawareans.