Government has the responsibility to work effectively. Different government agencies address violence prevention through their own mandates, disciplines, and perspectives, and are not well equipped to handle the challenge of effectively communicating and coordinating with each other. For example, the health discipline looks at violence in terms of morbidity and mortality, the justice discipline looks at crime, and educators look at suspension rates. It is critical to break through such barriers in order to address a problem as complex and pervasive as violence.
Shifting the Focus, an inter-governmental violence prevention collaboration in California, will be summarized. The framework that emerged from this working group, that can serve as a model for local and national cross-disciplinary collaboration, will be presented and analyzed. Highlights and recommendations for forming intergovernmental collaborations will be discussed. This will include eight major impediments to collaborative work including: funding, competition, timeframes, data and technology, knowledge, confidentiality, commitment, and vision, and eleven recommendations to overcome them.
At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 1) articulate the Shifting the Focus methodology that was developed to advance violence prevention and can be applied to other public health issues; 2) identify the major barriers to collaboration and articulate eleven recommendations related to provider training, fostering coalitions and networks, changing organizational practices, and developing policies and laws; 3) apply the Spectrum of Prevention to inter-disciplinary collaboration, which served as a tool for organizing the recommendations and barriers.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 1) articulate the Shifting the Focus methodology that was developed to advance violence prevention and can be applied to other public health issues; 2) identify the major barriers to collaboration and articulate eleven recommendations related to provider training, fostering coalitions and networks, changing organizational practices, and developing policies and laws; 3) apply the Spectrum of Prevention to inter-disciplinary collaboration, which served as a tool for organizing the recommendations and barriers
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: The Spectrum of Prevention
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.