DELTA Impact Recipients

About DELTA Impact

The Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancement and Leadership Through Alliances (DELTA) Impact program funds State Domestic Violence Coalitions to implement strategies and approaches designed to prevent intimate partner violence while also funding local communities to do the same.

The purpose of DELTA Impact is to decrease risk factors in communities that may lead to intimate partner violence and to increase protective factors that prevent it. Funded State Domestic Violence Coalitions and their local Coordinated Community Response Teams affect these factors by implementing programs and policies.

A Coordinated Community Response Team is an organized effort of diverse sectors (e.g., public health, law enforcement, and faith-based organizations) to prevent and respond to intimate partner violence. Historically, these Teams have focused on providing services to victims, holding batterers accountable, and reducing the number of recurring assaults. Few have concentrated on primary prevention. DELTA Impact supports the Coordinated Community Response Team to use intimate partner violence primary prevention strategies that affect the structural determinants of health at the societal or community levels, or the factors that influence where people live, work, and age.

DELTA Impact Theory of Change

This diagram illustrates the Theory of Change for DELTA Impact. CDC partners with State Domestic Violence Coalitions to provide the inputs and resources needed to support community and societal level primary prevention activities. These activities contribute to outcomes that lead to state coalitions’ ability to decrease intimate partner violence.

Intimate partner violence can be prevented

The negative consequences associated with intimate partner violence underscore the importance of stopping it before it occurs. A wide range of prevention strategies are available to help reduce the risk factors that lead to intimate partner violence, and increase the protective factors that decrease it. DELTA Impact is focused on implementing strategies that address community and societal level risk and protective factors. DELTA

Impact focuses on three strategies:

• Engage Influential Adults and Peers
• Create Protective Environments
• Strengthen Economic Supports for Families

Evidence shows that these strategies, along with several others, have an impact on intimate partner violence. For more information, see the Division of Violence Prevention’s, Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Across the Lifespan: A Technical Package of Programs, Policies, and Practices[4.52MB, 64Pages, 508], which summarizes strategies based on the best available evidence on preventing intimate partner violence.

CDC funds 9 State Domestic Violence Coalitions as part of the Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancement and Leadership Through Alliances (DELTA) Impact program. These coalitions include:

• Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
• California Partnership to End Domestic Violence
• Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence
• North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Ohio Domestic Violence Network
• Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence

Early Successes

Recipients select approaches (programs, policies, or practices) from three strategies in CDC’s Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Across the Lifespan: A Technical Package of Programs, Policies, and Practices.  Each strategy is described below, along with examples of early successes related to the strategy.

Strategy: Engage Influential Adults and Peers
This strategy includes approaches to engage influential adults and peers in promoting positive relationship expectations and condemning violent and unhealthy relationship behavior among adolescents and young adults. Here is an early success that a DELTA Impact recipient is having towards preventing IPV using this strategy:

• Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence
  The Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence is implementing a program called Ten Men, which engages male community leaders to prevent intimate partner violence. The program increases participants’ knowledge of intimate partner violence dynamics, including barriers to leaving an abusive relationship and the root causes of violence. The program also increases bystander intervention skills, including men’s roles in speaking out against intimate partner violence and promoting healthy masculinity and gender equity. Pre/post program survey data indicate that 100% of Ten Men program participants experienced significant increases in their understanding of the barriers women face in leaving an abusive partner and how gender socialization contributes to intimate partner violence. They also learned how to intervene when they witness a violent situation or suspect someone is experiencing intimate partner violence. Ten Men has a growing network of participants committed to engaging men and boys in their spheres of influence, challenging harmful social norms, and taking action as bystanders. Ten Men also conducts public awareness campaigns that promote healthy relationships, knowledge of intimate partner violence dynamics, and positive bystander intervention skills.

Strategy: Create Protective Environments
This strategy includes approaches to foster a social and physical environment that improves safety, social connections, and awareness of IPV in schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods that support the prevention of violence against intimate partners. Here are some early successes that DELTA Impact recipients are having towards preventing IPV using this strategy:

• Alaska Network to End Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
  The Alaska Network to End Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault has had promising results implementing a program geared towards boys. Boys Run I toowú klatseen (BRITK) is a 10-week, 20-session afterschool program for boys in 3rd-5th grade, which helps boys gain skills to build healthy relationships and create a respectful, nonviolent community. The program uses southeast Alaska traditional tribal values to promote respect, healthy living, and equitable gender norms and to break down unhealthy masculinity norms. Evaluation of BRITK showed that participants experienced an average 20% increase in understanding of healthy masculinity and gender roles. Building on this success, the Alaska coalition is conducting a more rigorous evaluation of BRITK in multiple afterschool settings across the southeastern region of Alaska. Additionally, a social marketing campaign will be implemented in the same region to complement BRITK’s positive social norms messaging.

• North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence
  The North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCCADV) has created safer environments on high school and college campuses. NCCADV has been assisting Domestic Violence Shelter and Services, Inc., in implementing Bringing in the Bystander® on a community college campus in Wilmington, NC. Bringing in the Bystander® is an evidence-based bystander intervention program to increase community responsibility and teach participants how to safely intervene in sexual and intimate partner violence incidents. NCCADV’s evaluation results indicate that 83.3% of participants showed an increase in skills to solve problems nonviolently as a result of Bringing in the Bystander.® One county has committed funding to implement the high school curriculum to all 9^th-grade health education classes. NCCADV anticipates training 700 college and high school students on this intervention by 2023.

• Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence
  The Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence is implementing a two-part intervention called Be the Change. Be the Change’s two parts—classroom curriculum and school-wide intervention—are designed to reduce middle school student dating violence and sexual harassment by highlighting perpetrators’ behavioral consequences and increasing facility surveillance of unsafe school areas. Over 25% of students in one of the target middle schools reported feeling scared at school, and 43% of students identified the cafeteria as unsafe. As a result of these data, the program has placed additional safety officers in this location.

Strategy: Strengthen economic supports for families
This strategy seeks to reduce predictors of IPV (e.g., relationship conflict and dissatisfaction) associated with financial stress by improving financial stability and autonomy and by reducing gender inequity in education, employment, and income. Here is an early success that a DELTA Impact recipient is having towards preventing IPV using this strategy:

• Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence
  The Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence (DCADV) seeks to prevent intimate partner violence by increasing protective factors in the community, specifically through strengthening families’ economic support. DCADV, in collaboration with the Domestic Violence Task Force and CHILD, Inc., is implementing Sparrow Run Supporting Families, a program whose goal is to improve economic stability for families by increasing community members’ access to financial and food support programs like SNAP, TANF, and WIC. Based in a community resource center, this program provides services to 400 low-income clients each year. The community center brings these programs directly to Sparrow Run community members by allowing them to apply onsite through the center, rather than requiring them to visit a state office or other provider. In the coming year, the center looks to increase participation in Allstate’s Moving Ahead Program, which aims to help intimate partner violence survivors move from short-term safety to long-term security.