23 - Five years of pushing to the outer layer: Capacity building, partnerships, and structural lenses for health equity within sexual violence prevention practice

Abstract Information: When practitioners attempt to take up structural lenses, what can evaluation tools contribute? In 2019, CDC began funding CE19-1902 Rape Prevention and Education (RPE): Using the Best Available Evidence for Sexual Violence Prevention. RPE funding was distributed to state public health departments in order to fund primary prevention of sexual violence, with an emphasis on prevention efforts that take up a structural lens to understanding sexual violence and that seek to change the contexts that fuel sexual violence (e.g., social norms, organizational practices) above and beyond any individual. State health departments hired evaluators as part of their funding requirements and, across the country, local subrecipients used RPE funding in diverse ways. Throughout the grant period, an increased focus on health equity emerged. This grant ended in January 2024. In this panel, CDC evaluators as well as state-level evaluators from three different states gather to share reflections on the ways in which evaluation tools have been leveraged in RPE with an eye for health equity. First, CDC evaluators, as our moderators, share how the RPE program has worked to internally build capacity to provide training and technical assistance related to health equity and the implementation of violence prevention strategies and approaches. Then, Illinois evaluators share results from an evaluation study of rape crisis centers partnerships, leveraging visual partnership networks created for subrecipients and measuring partnership network changes over time. These visual networks and mixed-methods survey and interview data were used to investigate the role of partnerships in centering community voices and reaching minority populations. Next, an Ohio RPE evaluator shares the ways in which principles of empowerment evaluation can be used to support identifying and intervening in key levers of change in prevention practice/coordination, with respect to health equity. Finally, a Colorado evaluator shares how she has utilized research and evaluation to leverage opportunities to advance equitable and culturally sensitive practices for sexual violence prevention activities. Ultimately, this panel seeks to explore tangible examples of utilizing evaluation tools to equip partners and to better understand what it means to incorporate health equity into prevention practice. We also look towards the future, and how evaluation and prevention practice, moving forward, may work together to achieve health equity.