The School District of Philadelphia is using their Project Prevent grant to increase capacity to identify, assess, and serve students exposed to pervasive violence and help ensure that students are offered mental health services for trauma and/or anxiety. Through Project Prevent funding, they are implementing evidence-based violence prevention strategies at all three tiers within the PBIS Framework.
To implement their Project Prevent violence prevention strategies to reduce the likelihood of students later committing violent acts, they are using an implementation science approach to inform the entire process—from selection of interventions to fidelity to sustainability and are using data to make decisions on next steps, share information, and monitor timelines for task completion. A small Project Prevent team meets bi-weekly to plan and execute selection of implementation science outcomes, create a data collection tool, and prepare and share data at larger monthly meetings. Although this takes a good deal of time, they will continue using this approach to sustain their programs and activities through the grant and expand violence prevention programs in other Philadelphia schools that are implementing a PBIS Framework.
Click here to learn more about the Project Prevent grant at the School District of Philadelphia.