Community Identified Strategies in Injury and Violence Prevention during Compounding Crises

Since March of 2020, many organizations in Minnesota quickly changed their policies, priorities, and prevention programming to better meet the needs of communities during times of compounding crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. The Minnesota Department of Health Injury and Violence Prevention Unit collaborated with Men As Peacemakers to explore how prevention work shifted during the COVID-19 response and collect strategies that supported an organization’s ability to weather these crises. Rather than a one-size-fits-all checklist of steps, these strategies encourage organizations and supporting partners to increase community-connectedness in times of crisis and stability.

Key strategies used for making prevention work possible during compounding crises include listening, reflecting, and planning.

Download the report: Community Identified Strategies in Injury and Violence Prevention during Crisis (PDF).

Five community-identified strategies for prevention

This collaboration was established to help  understand the impact COVID-19 had on prevention organizations and their work. Through a series of surveys and focus groups, community based prevention organizations  identified five strategies that organizations can use to prepare for and withstand compounding crises. The five strategies are:

• Strategy 1: Expand the understanding of and approach to “prevention” in order to achieve health equity.
• Strategy 2: Center the voices, leadership, and expertise of those most impacted by the conditions that create barriers to health equity; address systemic conditions that propagate disparities.
• Strategy 3: Support, amplify, and invest in community-based organizations that meet community need and work toward health equity.
• Strategy 4: “Pause and pivot” to ensure any adaptations to prevention programming actually meet community need; systems partners need to create and support infrastructures that allow this flexibility.
• Strategy 5: Adopt community-connectedness as the foundation of prevention.

Prevention toolkit

These five strategies have been translated into practical guidance and tools for the purposes of supporting both community-based prevention programs, as well as other partners within the prevention community, now and into the future. A series of webinars have also been produced spotlighting experts who participated in the creation of the narrative.

View the prevention toolkit and access the many tools that have been developed to guide prevention organizations in surviving compounding crises and planning for future challenges.