Penn Nursing’s Center for Global Women’s Health Awarded State Grant
The Center for Global Women’s Health (CGWH) has been awarded another $30,000 grant through It’s On Us PA, a statewide campaign that aims to end sexual assault by bringing together college and university presidents, superintendents, administrators, teachers, students, families, and community members to reframe the conversation around sexual violence and pledge to be part of the solution.
The grant provides funding from January 2023 through May 2024 to implement strategies on campuses, such as improving awareness, prevention, reporting, and response systems regarding sexual violence in schools; removing/reducing barriers that prevent survivors of sexual violence from reporting and/or accessing vital resources; and demonstrating significant, proactive, and sustainable leadership to change campus culture and improve the climate around sexual assault.
“Once again, the CGWH is partnering with the Netter Center-After School Program and using a peer mentoring co-facilitation model to train nursing students to co-facilitate the ‘Bringing in the Bystander’ program with West Philly High School students. In teams, they will implement the program to 100 West Philly High School students,” said Monique Howard, EdD, MPH, Senior Director, Women’s Health Initiatives. “In addition, the students will design sexual violence prevention videos that will be played on social media. We are very excited about the continued partnering of these two Centers and are hopeful that this work will support other violence prevention programming that is conducted in this community.”
Additionally, the students will learn how to identify risk factors for sexual violence and safely intervene as active bystanders to prevent assault. The program will use the evidenced-based Bringing in the Bystander (BIB) training program, which is a bystander intervention that is specific for high school students.
The goal of The Successful Bystander Program is to reduce societal and cultural norms that prevent youth from acting in the role of bystander. The Successful Bystander Program will use a co-facilitation, train the trainer model, and utilize the Bringing in the Bystander (BIB) intervention to teach individuals how to identify a situation, and safely diffuse, distract, or intervene in instances where sexual violence may occur.