Advancing Prevention Zones: Implementing Community-Based Strategies to Prevent Child Maltreatment and Promote Healthy Families

Abstract

In searching for a "disruptive" new paradigm to prevent child abuse, we are drawn to an older approach with unfulfilled promise. In 1993, the United States Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect published their report Neighbors Helping Neighbors: A New National Strategy for the Protection of Children. The top priority recommendation of the Board was to develop programs that facilitated the development and safety of neighborhoods by establishing Prevention Zones to improve social and physical environments with high rates of child maltreatment. This paper explores how Prevention Zones might be re-imagined today, integrated with services like home-visiting and medical homes, and applied to serious child maltreatment such as abusive head trauma.

A Structured Review of the Literature on Abusive Head Trauma Prevention

“…Studies included in this category support the idea that potential strategies to prevent AHT should include professional training to improve identification and reporting, as well as delivering education to parents and others about the dangers of shaking a baby and AHT. While more research is needed to understand parent behaviour, professional practice, and social and community factors, a more broad and universal approach in any of these areas of focus needs to be comprehensive, accepted and available at the community level (Roygardner et al ., 2019).…”

Leveraging Family and Community Strengths to Reduce Child Maltreatment

“…We prioritize the Prevention Zones framework because the model is oriented toward reducing abuse and neglect, is nonmanualized (to allow for community flexibility in design and implementation), effectively integrates medical and community models, and is grounded in empirical evidence. Effective implementation of the framework should include (1) the identification of key stakeholders in the community, to communicate with families; (2) public education in neighborhoods on child maltreatment and positive parenting; (3) implementation of healthy-family activities including in home health assessments, financial literacy, community babysitting, and volunteer play groups; and (4) institutionalizing sustainability practices by developing steering and strategic innovations committees (Roygardner, Palusci, and Hughes 2019). Active ingredients should focus on addressing the family and community contexts in which maltreatment occurs, the stimulation of supportive community relationships, flexibility of implementation, and the use of assets already present within the community (Kimbrough-Melton and Melton 2015).…”

“…By adopting the strategies of child maltreatment prevention articulated in Prevention Zones and the Strong and Thriving Families Resource Guide , the integrated strategy is targeted, yet universal, allowing us to increase our focus on leveraging strengths and building resilience without sacrificing our focus on specialized interventions. Our review suggests that promising models of effective, health-based and community-based prevention initiatives could be integrated into place-based Prevention Zones , leading to a universal, comprehensive, community-level approach that leverages local strengths and resources to prevent child maltreatment (Roygardner, Palusci, and Hughes 2019). This public health–oriented strategy (Dias, Mooren, and Kleiber 2018; Herrenkohl, Leeb, and Higgins 2016; Kelleher, Reece, and Sandel 2018; Fortson et al 2016) tasks community members to move beyond mere reporting to CPS and, instead, to engage in explicit actions to prevent maltreatment through a coordinated, multidisciplinary infrastructure of evidence-based primary prevention interventions for reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors before maltreatment occurs (Palusci and Vandervort 2014; Herrenkohl, Leeb, and Higgins 2016).…”

Where We’ve Been and May Go, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

“…No Hit Zones start a different community discussion by addressing corporal punishment, which affects the parent-child relationship beyond the potential for physical abuse (LeBlanc et al, 2019). What’s old is new again as we consider broad community-based strategies such as Prevention Zones (Roygardner et al, 2020). I believe we are entering a time for what is referred to as a “precision-based, personalized framework for prevention” (or what I call precision prevention) where we can tailor our strategies to an individual’s risk profiles and genetics (August & Gewirtz, 2019).…”