The Center for Disease Control(CDC) defines primary prevention against sexual violence as “population-based and/or environmental and system-level strategies, policies, and actions that prevent sexual violence from initially occurring. Such prevention efforts work to modify and/or entirely eliminate the events, conditions, situations, or exposure to influences (risk-factors) that result in the initiation of sexual violence and associated injuries, disabilities, and deaths.” Primary prevention focuses on the bigger picture of society to help prevent sexual violence from occurring. One example of primary prevention is working with community partners to engage others in conversations about sexual violence prevention. Another example is engaging youth in conversations about media and its poor depictions of relationships and consent.
Risk reduction is programming that helps individuals with skills that reduce their risk of violence. Examples of risk reduction are self-defense classes, tips on how to spot drug facilitated sexual violence, and/or good touch and bad touch education. While they are all important topics to be educated on, they are not primary prevention efforts for a few reasons. First, these efforts are focused on an individual instead of a whole community. Second, this does not reduce the likelihood of assault as a whole, it just makes it less likely to happen to a specific individual. Finally, risk reduction makes the individual responsible for their own safety, whereas primary prevention puts an emphasis on individuals not committing sexual violence in the first place. Both of these strategies are important but primary prevention is the overall goal so risk reduction is no longer needed.
Resource: https://www.cdc.gov/sexual-violence/prevention/index.html
Written by: Beth Ganion
Edited by: Kirsti McNeece
