Rape Prevention and Education: Enhancing Capacity for Sexual Violence Prevention Across State and Territory Sexual Assault Coalitions - Sexual violence (SV) is a significant public health and safety problem in Alaska with a profound impact on health, opportunity, and well-being. The 2020 Alaska Victimization Survey found that an estimated 41% of adult women in Alaska had experienced SV in their lifetime. According to the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, about 13% of Alaskan high school students had experienced SV in the past year. The rate of rape per 100,000 in Alaska in 2022 was 134 per 100,000. This was over 3 times the national average of 40 per 100,000 in that same period. The Rape Prevention Education (RPE) Coalition funds will allow ANDVSA to strengthen our partnership with the Alaska Department of Health which holds the State’s RPE program. ANDVSA will build infrastructure for SV prevention, work with the Statewide Pathways Steering Committee to update the current state action plan (SAP) and implement SV prevention strategies in two focus areas: 1) Strengthen Economic Supports and 2) Promote Social Norms that Protect Against Violence. ANDVSA will build internal program capacity to facilitate and monitor the implementation of statewide SV prevention efforts and conduct a SV primary prevention capacity assessment with a focus on health equity. Under focus Area 1: Strengthen Economic Supports, ANDVSA will partner this funding opportunity with our CDC Delta AHEAD strengthening economic supports project to intentionally focus on the area of gender pay equity. The CDC Delta AHEAD project has a focus area of Family Friendly Workplace Policies and ANDVSA will add in a project to strengthen household financial security for working mothers. Under focus Area 3: Promoting Social Norms that Protect Against Violence, ANDVSA will continue the Strengthen Campaign which focuses on engaging Men and Boys as Allies in Prevention. The campaign supports men acting as mentors to young men and provides opportunities for connecting like-minded men who want to be part of the solution. Our RPE Coalition plan will come alongside the efforts of SAP’s work in schools with youth by working with teen groups outside of the school setting. A statewide group now forming, Alaska Teens Against Abuse, will focus on Alaska’s new laws regarding consent and how understanding what is meant by consent will prevent SV. This is in keeping with CDC’s emphasis on promoting prosocial behavior and creating the context for non-violent behavior, relationships, and norms to prevent SV. We believe this project will combine bystander and individual skills-based learning approaches through building healthy dating and intimate relationship skills and empowerment skills. By the end of the four-year period of performance, all strategies will have evaluative measures that are reviewed annually. We anticipate seeing a documented increase of men who are informed of their role in stopping SV; a reduction in the gender pay gap as shown in the annual Foraker report collecting annual salary information from non-profit organizations; that youth will understand consent laws; and we anticipate results showing a reduction in the reports of prior year sexual victimization through the AVS.
