Watch WFFF-TV interview with Linda Johnson
A grant in the amount of $1.6 million awarded by the CDC Injury Center will fund this scientific study for a four year period.
“We are honored to be one of three prevention programs in the United States to be chosen as worthy of scientific, rigorous study. This is so gratifying. We could not be happier!”, said Linda E Johnson, Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont.
This grant will allow PCAVT to have a rigorous study of the efficacy of their child sexual abuse prevention programs for children in grades Pre-K through 5, Care for Kids© and We Care Elementary©. The primary Investigators are Beth Molnar, PhD and John Holton, PhD, of Northeastern University and The University of Illinois at Chicago, respectively. Safe Shores, Inc. in Washington, DC, will implement PCAVT’s programs to prevent child sexual abuse for this rigorous scientific evaluation at 16 public charter schools, over 4 years. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will also partner in the study.
Grant funds will become available before the end of 2021, and the schools will begin implementing the program, titled The Healthy Relationships Project©, in 6-month intervals in a stepped wedge randomized trial design study. Within 1 year, the expectation is that there will be an increase in knowledge and skills gained by parents, caregivers, and educators regarding child sexual abuse, how to prevent it, an increase in students’ positive socio-emotional skills, and a decrease in the reports of child sexual abuse for children in the schools that are using this program.
The Healthy Relationships Project© is a primary prevention curriculum that is developmentally appropriate, trauma informed, and comprised of both victim and victimization prevention. It was written and has been delivered by PCAVT since the mid-1990s and shared across 30 states, including statewide across Vermont. Since its implementation, substantiated cases in Vermont dropped 72% between 1992 and 2020, and the number of child perpetrators dropped 77% in that same time. Given this promising preliminary data, this curriculum is expected to perform well under this rigorous scientific evaluation. This study will move the science of child sexual abuse prevention research forward, as few approaches to prevention have ever been evaluated in this way.
The mission of PCAVT is to promote and support healthy relationships within families, schools, and communities to eliminate child abuse. Serving Vermont began as Parents Anonymous of VT in 1976 and has grown to have a helpline and 3 main programmatic areas: Child Sexual Abuse Prevention, Family Support Programs, and the Safe Environments for Infants and Toddlers Program. PCAVT partners with over 250 organizations across Vermont, and many more both nationally and internationally. PCAVT’s programs are skills based, teaching adults how to nurture healthy development in children, and emphasize adult responsibility in keeping children safe.
For more than 20 years, CDC’s Injury Center has helped protect Americans from injury and violence. They work to understand how injury and violence impact all of us and what we can do to prevent it.