Welcome

Source: https://csndr.harvard.edu/prevention Parent: https://csndr.harvard.edu/report-concern-ndab

Prevention Team

We All Have a Role to Play in Preventing Harm

Welcome

The Prevention Team engages community members in collaborative learning, development, and outreach initiatives designed to reduce harm, improve systems and structures, and catalyze culture change.

Connect with us! If you would like to contact the Prevention Team, please email csndr_prevention@harvard.edu

Understanding Prevention

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What We Do expand_more

Our team is here to help you fulfill your vision for a safer and more inclusive Harvard.

Whether you are a student, staff member, faculty member, or postdoctoral fellow, the Prevention Team collaborates with you to design, facilitate, and evaluate initiatives to increase communities' collective capacity to address and reduce power-based interpersonal harm, including discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment, and other sexual misconduct.

Examples of individuals and groups who work with the Prevention Team include: recognized student organizations, final clubs, athletics, executive leaders, department chairs and administrators, research centers, laboratories, classroom instructors, and more.

How do we engage in prevention work?

Assessment & Consultation: We provide evidenced-based community assessment tools, and provide consultative services on best practices for reducing the likelihood of discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment, and other sexual misconduct in higher education.
Education & Training: We deliver workshops, presentations, and learning initiatives to help community members recognize the University's policies and develop prevention and response skills.
Engagement & Outreach: We offer events, materials, and other opportunities to raise awareness of resources and build connection across the community.

For more information about how to engage with our services, visit the "Services" page here on our website!

What We Believe expand_more

The Prevention Team believes:

Everyone deserves to feel safe and valued in the spaces where we learn, live, teach, study, and work.
We all can play a critical role in reducing, preventing, and ending discrimination, interpersonal violence, and the impacts of such harm.
Discrimination and interpersonal violence are significant public health issues with physical, emotional, financial, and social health consequences.
Prevention is a collective, intersectional endeavor that requires the efforts of structures and systems as well as individuals and communities.
Prevention begins with care, attention, curiosity, and consent.
Efforts to advance harm prevention and non-discrimination must be rooted in values that include agency, accountability, community, integrity, and transformation.

Frameworks that Shape Our Work expand_more

Prevention refers to efforts to reduce likelihood of harm, address conditions that give rise to harm, and influencing other factors that contribute to violence and harm within and across communities.

The Prevention Team utilizes and adapts existing evidence-based frameworks to our approach to preventing and reducing harm within the Harvard Community. These include:

The Prevention Puzzle

We all have a role to play in preventing power-based interpersonal harm in our communities.
The Prevention Team works to help Harvard community members recognize where we each have the power to improve safety and belonging on interpersonal, structural, and cultural levels.
This means that while active bystanders are key to disrupting and discouraging harmful conduct in our communities, being an active bystander is just one piece of the puzzle.
For example, you may be in a position to improve systems and structures in your organization, department, lab, or classroom. You might be able to catalyze culture change in your team, residential community, or friend group by working to shift norms, attitudes, and values toward consent, care, and belonging.
No matter how you approach prevention as a member of the Harvard community, please know that your voice matters. Whether you are speaking up when witnessing harm or shaping policy change toward greater equity, our collective actions make a difference.

A Public Health Framework for Prevention: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Approaches

Primary prevention occurs upstream, where we can improve conditions that give rise to harm in the first place
Secondary prevention occurs midstream, where the conditions for harm already exist, but actions are taken to safeguard against harm occurring and recurring.
Tertiary prevention occurs after a person or people have been impacted by harm, where the focus becomes support, healing, and the co-creation of improved conditions for the future
Learn more about our approach to prevention on the Prevention Learning Hub!

Goals of the Prevention Team expand_more

The Prevention Team’s primary goals are:

First and foremost, to effectively reduce the prevalence of discrimination, interpersonal violence, and the impacts of such harm at Harvard.
To help each member of the Harvard community to recognize the role we can play fostering an environment free from discrimination and interpersonal violence.
To co-create and clarify shared community values and norms that center agency, boundaries, and consent.
To support groups, teams, and organizations in fostering psychological safety to promote active bystander intervention.
For community members to be caring, active bystanders.
For community members to be able to make informed choices about accessing supportive resources and processes that fit their needs.
For community members to feel confident accessing the supportive resources available across Harvard.

Contact Prevention

Email csndr_prevention@harvard.edu