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reduce violence across communities and beyond
Policies are an important part of a comprehensive violence prevention plan. They can help create an environment that enables or reinforces programs and practices. Since policies have the potential to influence community- and societal conditions that increase or buffer against the risk for violence, having a comprehensive violence prevention plan that includes policy-oriented approaches is important for sustainable, upstream violence prevention. Violence prevention policies that focus on social and economic conditions help ensure that the benefits of violence prevention policies, practices, and programs extend to all segments of the population. A comprehensive approach can achieve greater reductions in violence over time.
Upstream policy efforts, or those that address the root causes of violence, are critical to improve the determinants of health that contribute to violence.
Action steps to support upstream policy efforts may include:
- Building awareness of the connection between social issues and violence with different audiences.
- Conducting research on the connection between social issues and violence and making the research accessible.
- Strengthening staff capacity to identify and focus on upstream factors across the agency’s programs, practices, and policy efforts.
- Understanding the priorities of local communities, partnering with them, and directing resources to support their priorities.
See “Identify a Role for Your Agency in the Policy Process” below for more ways to take action.
When you think "policy," be sure to consider procedures, administrative actions, incentives, and voluntary practices, whether they operate at the organizational, local, state, or national level. Policies are defined as binding, enforceable written statements that reflect the values and decisions of a group or organization. They can apply broadly to a geographic area, institution, physical space, or group of people. Types of policies include guidelines, principles, or methods created by government agencies, as well as organizational contracts, rules, or practices established within an agency or organization. Regulatory rules governing how to calculate eligibility for a benefit count as policies too.
Implementing policies follows largely the same process as any other violence prevention approach. State and local agencies can support the policy process in several ways, and work in tandem with partners and other sectors.
- State and local agencies funded by CDC are permitted to work directly on policy-related matters. Look for CDC Anti-Lobbying Guidelines in Policy Resources for what activities are allowed or prohibited.
Policies come in many forms—contracts, organizational procedures, local ordinances, and resolutions, for example. Working on policy involves many of the skills that state and local agencies already use. Click on a step in the policy process to see some potential roles for your agency:
To learn more about CDC's Policy Process, visit:
For a useful example on Informing Policy, visit:
- Convene partners.
- Share and analyze existing data and support the collection of new data, to identify trends and opportunities.
- Gather demographic data to identify local populations that may be at risk for violence.
See Planning and Partnerships for more information about each of these activities.
See how San Antonio used evidence and data to build community support for high quality preschool education.
At every step, engage and educate partners.
- Identify and connect with decision-makers, partners, groups and community members affected by the policy to gather feedback on the problem and discuss potential policy approaches.
- Collaborate with key partners to provide education about policy issues.
- Identify partners in other sectors or issue areas who may have an interest in the policy or who are currently working on policy in general.
- Connect practitioners to key partners.
- Work with private sector partners to raise awareness on the benefits of the policy and/or identify ways to strengthen policies.
- Educate the public about existing policies.
Evaluate throughout the process.
- Assess what works and what doesn’t work throughout the policy process.
- Evaluate the implementation and impact of the policy.
- Provide feedback based on evaluation results to inform potential changes to implementation, guidance or enforcement.
- Collaborate with community members, representatives, and leaders with lived experience of violence to research and interpret the impact of policies.
- Share results of the evaluation with key partners.
- For more information about evaluating injury prevention policies, review NCIPCs Policy Evaluation Briefs found in the Resource Center.
