Leveraging Community Efforts to Advance the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse

Background and Purpose:

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a costly public health problem associated with personal and collective consequences affecting mental and physical health, and financial security. A critical solution to this problem is prevention. Through a community-research partnership, two institutions collaborated to examine the landscape of previous and current child sexual abuse prevention efforts and perspectives on future priority areas within one Northeastern state. The research provided documentation of historical efforts, lessons learned, and perspectives that the experienced key constituents had related to their CSA prevention initiatives. The research also provided a vision (priorities, strategies, steps) for promoting new CSA preventive measures that include research, practices, and policies.

Methods:

Two qualitative phases of research were sequentially completed, including individual interviews and focus groups with professionals who have experience in CSA programming including advocacy, policy development, or research within the state. Interviews included questions about the history of past and current prevention strategies, best practices and lessons learned, barriers, prevention needs within the community, and the need for policies. Focus groups included questions about what CSA prevention practices should be advanced, what research is needed, what policies should be supported, social norms that are barriers to prevention, and efforts that should be prioritized. Twelve professionals completed interviews. On average these individuals were 56 years old. They were primarily female (67%), white (75%), had master’s degrees (42%) and were involved in statewide efforts (84%). Six professionals participated in focus groups. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results:

Interview data yielded six themes relating to 1) education and training, 2) awareness and motivation, 3) research and evidence based practice, 4) policy needs, and 5) focusing on offenders. Focus group data yielded two themes relating to comprehensive efforts and considerations for needs and gaps, cultural components, and challenges with research. Altogether the data suggest that ongoing education about CSA is needed across the social ecology, that societal shifts and advancements in areas such as technology must be attended to in the evolution of prevention practices, and community-based approaches require new research to answer important questions about prevalence, evidence-based practices and implementation, and community wide efforts.

Conclusions and Implications

Decades of prevention strategies have informed current practices with participation involving local, national, and international organizations. Several programs or curriculums have been implemented across the state and several work groups have informed the development of new approaches. Yet ongoing, sustained prevention efforts have not evolved. The opportunity for strengthening prevention efforts remains and new priorities require new research as well as holistic approaches to community engagement.