Massachusetts Department of Health – Bureau of Community Health and Prevention
Providing technical assistance to MA Department of Health funded organizations to support healthy relationships
Summary
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) funds healthy relationship promotion and teen dating violence prevention grants in populations experiencing high rates of dating and sexual violence. DPH funds partnerships with domestic and/or sexual violence programs, schools or other youth-serving organizations, and organizations serving specific cultural populations to implement youth-specific programming and cross-training of project partners to improve services to underserved populations of youth. Positive youth development is a core part of programming, with youth leadership prioritized whenever possible.
The Bureau of Community Health and Prevention (BCHAP) is responsible for implementing Healthy Relationships Grant Programs. Root Cause supports BCHAP’s Division of Sexual and Domestic Violence Prevention and Services (DSDV) to provide project coordination, administration support, data collection support, and technical assistance to Healthy Relationship Grant partnerships selected to participate in the program.
Root Cause also supports evaluation efforts for the Healthy Relationship grants, to determine effectiveness of programming and improvement in policies and partnerships.
Goals & Results
Root Cause has been providing dedicated technical assistance and support to Healthy Relationship program grantees to implement the project goals (see below):
- Promoting healthy relationships: Work with youth aged 12-18 to promote healthy relationships of all kinds and to prevent sexual violence and dating abuse.
- Policy and Practice Adoption: Work together to adopt policies and practices within youth-serving organizations or school-based settings to reduce sexual assault and dating violence among youth and promote racial equity.
- Capacity-building: Collaborate to build capacity of partner agencies to support youth, value youth leadership, and safely, effectively, and sustainably continue working with youth to promote healthy relationships and prevent harmful behaviors.
In the first year, we helped grantees think more systemically about their work while applying a racial equity lens. Root Cause hosted four Community of Practice sessions that addressed topics such as performance measurement, social determinants of health, root causes of health inequities, the socio-ecological model and positive youth development.
About the Partner
Massachusetts Department of Health – Bureau of Community Health and Prevention
The mission of BCHAP is to promote the well-being of everyone in Massachusetts, with attention on populations disproportionately impacted by health inequities. We aim to reduce social and structural barriers that lead to poor health by working with communities, people and partners across the Commonwealth. BCHAP commits to transforming the systems that maintain racial and social inequities and owns its responsibility as part of the government to prevent these injustices.
With Us
