Description

Innovations in the Primary Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse: A Message of HOPE Through Science

Child sexual abuse is preventable. The question is how we turn that belief into action at the scale needed to make a difference.

This Community of Practice brings together emerging science, innovative prevention strategies, and practical lessons about what it takes to prevent child sexual abuse before it happens.

We’ll explore the promise of community-wide, place-based approaches that go beyond changing individual behavior to address the environments and conditions that influence risk and protection. We’ll also look at how rigorous evaluation can help us know whether these approaches are working—and how that evidence can inform policy, investment, and broader prevention efforts.

Together, we’ll examine:

• Why community-wide, place-based approaches matter for primary prevention
• How innovative evaluation methods can demonstrate community-level impact
• How prevention science can be translated into policy and practice

This is a conversation grounded in science—and in hope. The more we understand about what creates safer communities, the better equipped we are to act.

Prevention is possible. Science can help show us how.

Speaker:

Jennie G. Noll, PhD is Professor of Psychology and Executive Director of the Mt. Hope FamilyCenter at the University of Rochester She is a leading scientist in the fields of childhood welfare, developmental psychology, stress resilience, and community-wide primary prevention with continuous funding as Principal Investigator from the National Institutes of Health for over three decades totaling over $40M including 2 Centers of Excellence. Dr. Noll has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed papers which have been cited over 13,000 times. Results from several of Dr. Noll's studies and primary prevention efforts are published in high-impact journals such as Nature and JAMA series and have informed public policy recommendations for child abuse prevention and treatment by Joint State Government Commissions, the Institute of Medicine, and the U.S. Congress. Dr. Noll's is an inceptor of the research-to-policy collaborative® which leverages cutting-edge science to aid evidence-informed policymaking focused on public investment in child maltreatment prevention and improving the lives of survivors. In 2025 Dr. Noll was awarded the Gold Medal Award for Impact on the field of Psychology; the highest honor bestowed by the American Psychological Association.