A Comprehensive Technical Package for the Prevention of Youth Violence and Associated Risk Behaviors

This technical package represents a select group of strategies based on the best available evidence to help communities and states sharpen their focus on prevention activities with the greatest potential to prevent youth violence and its consequences. These strategies include promoting family environments that support healthy development; providing quality education early in life; strengthening youth’s skills; connecting youth to caring adults and activities; creating protective community environments; and intervening to lessen harms and prevent future risk. The strategies represented in this package include those with a focus on preventing youth violence from happening in the first place as well as approaches to reduce the immediate and long-term harms of youth violence in order to prevent future violence. Preventing youth violence requires multiple, complementary strategies, and those outlined in the package reflect the mature research-base about how to strengthen individual’s skills and relationships to prevent youth violence. It also includes promising evidence about ways to address broader community issues that affect the likelihood of youth violence.