Promoting Healthy Relationships in Massachusetts: Insights from our Technical Assistance Work with MA Department of Public Health

The statistics on intimate partner and dating violence in the United States are alarming.

• On average, 24 people per minute in the United States  are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner, amounting to over  12 million individuals annually. 
• Almost half of all women (48.4%)  and men (48.8%)  in the US have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime
• 9.4% of high school students reported being hit, slapped, or physically hurt intentionally by their partner in the previous 12 months.
• Almost 1 in 10 teens in relationships reports having a partner tamper with their social media account, which constitutes the most frequent form of harassment or abuse.

Communities across Massachusetts are actively addressing these challenges, drawing on the expertise and resilience of individuals and organizations, and funding from the state that is dedicated to violence prevention work. In Massachusetts, 33.9% of women and 31.7% of men experience intimate partner physical violence, sexual violence, and/or stalking in their lifetimes. The Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey finds that 1 in 10 teens report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. Black individuals, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants and residents of rural communities experience the highest rates or poor outcomes of sexual and domestic violence.

A proven  violence prevention strategy is to offer programming that promotes healthy relationships among young people. This evidence-based approach has demonstrated  positive impacts on  teens,  their families and the community at large. Since 2020, the Division of Sexual and Domestic 

Violence Prevention and Services at the Massachusetts  Department of Health (DPH)  has been awarding grants to community partners statewide to implement the Healthy Relationships grant program, specifically targeting teens (12-18) to address dating violence. DPH aims to engage grantees in making a systemic impact, focusing on root causes and transforming systems at the lake and groundwater levels  to reduce the need for intensive individual-level interventions.

In 2023, Root Cause was contracted by the DPH to  provide  customized technical assistance and support to five Healthy Relationship program grantees and their sub-grantees  (Elizabeth Freeman Center, Safe Passage, Impact Boston, Boston Public Health Commission, Family and Community Resources in collab, Cape Verdean Association of Brockton, Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, and Boys and Girls Metro South). This support includes  grantee coaching and Community of Practice (COP) sessions  utilizing a peer learning model to guide direct service providers through program quality roadmap and improvement phases. Our efforts aim to ensure that grantees achieve the grant goals and enhance DPH’s capacity to work equitably and effectively with community partners/vendors. 

Here are a few takeaways from year 1 of the project

• There is significant value in helping direct service providers understand their role within broader systemic issues and the upstream work public agency grants are trying to address. Root Cause adopts an equity lens across all projects through the  integration of the groundwater framework and socio-ecological lens into our health equity projects.  Our work assists grantees in expanding their prevention efforts to address root causes while improving their curriculum to help individuals. By applying this model to the CoP sessions, grantees have been able  to intentionally connect and  better align their activities with DPH’s broader vision.
• Technical assistance for grantees is a valuable investment. Customized TA for grantees helps them do their work better. It provides space for reflection, peer learning and sustainability planning.
• The Community of Practice model is valuable for learning and collaboration. According to Gita Gulati-Partee and Maggie Potapchuk, “We build the container not to avoid conflict and hard emotions or create some false sense of “safe space.” Rather, we build it precisely because we know conflict and emotions will arise and that “safety” can be elusive and subjective”. Funders should consider integrating this model into future grant cycles to enhance effectiveness.

This is only the first year of the project. As an organization, we define success as doing work that helps us realize some positive social change.  This work does exactly that. We are excited about the  opportunities to continue to evaluate and adapt this project to better improve outcomes for grantees, the youths they are working with, DPH, and the Commonwealth at large.