Prevention Institute


Prevention Institute is a non-profit national center located in Oakland, California dedicated to improving community health and well-being by building momentum for effective primary prevention. Its website describes its work as "characterized by a strong commitment to community participation and promotion of equitable health outcomes among all social and economic groups.”

Work and partnerships

PI's work, described generally under public health, is expansive and includes numerous areas/issues of focus, specifically: injury and preventing violence, traffic safety, health equities, nutrition and physical activity, and youth development. Although its work is focused on public health, Prevention Institute was founded to address both complex health as well as social issues. The Institute works and collaborates with other recognized organizations from both the public and private arenas of policy, health care, public health and philanthropy including The American Public Health Association, The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, The California Wellness Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, Trust for America's Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PolicyLink and community leaders, experts and organizers from across the country.
Examples of Prevention Institute's work and partnerships include:
California Campaign to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health, which was an initiative formed through partnerships with the American Public Health Association and the California Health and Human Services Agency, and funded by the California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, and the California Wellness Foundation.
UNITY, or Urban Networks to Increase Thriving Youth, is a project designed to developed partnerships between community activists and leaders to strengthen and support cities in preventing violence before it occurs and to help sustain these efforts. The network goal is to build support for "effective, sustainable efforts to prevent violence so that urban youth can thrive in safe environments with supportive relationships and opportunities for success."
The Strategic Alliance is a coalition of nutrition and physical activity advocates in California who are attempting to shift the focus of the issue of nutrition and physical activity away from personal responsibility and individual choice to the role of the environment as well as corporate and government practices in shaping eating and activity behaviors. The Alliance's goal is to benefit the health and wellness of all California residents by promoting environmental solutions and institutional and government policies and practices that support healthy eating and activity. The coalition, serving as an independent voice that is separate from, but able to influence, government and industry, includes California Adolescent Nutrition and Fitness Program, California Center for Public Health Advocacy, California Food Policy Advocates, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, California Park & Recreation Society, California Project LEAN, California WIC Association, Child Care Food Program Roundtable, Latino Health Access, Partnership for the Public's Health, Samuels & Associates, and YMCA of the East Bay.
Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership, a collaboration of funders who have come together with the shared goal of changing policies and environments to better achieve the vision of healthy people living in healthy places. On behalf of the partnership, PI authored and prepared the document, "Promising Strategies for Creating Healthy Eating and Active Living Environments", which is a part of a larger strategy to identify high impact approaches towards their vision of healthy people in healthy places, including several other policy briefs and reports.
Prevention Institute also provides training, technical assistance, research, and evaluation for coalitions, community-based organizations, government agencies and private foundations to establish effective prevention programs and efforts and help promote prevention policies.

Tools and publications

In addition to working directly with communities and institutions across the US, Prevention Institute develops tools and other materials to support the crafting, implementation, and evaluation of comprehensive prevention initiatives and effective coalitions. It has also published several reports and other documents dealing with issues in public policy, public health and social issues.
Examples:
PI, through the Strategic Alliance, developed ENACT, or the Environmental Nutrition and Activity Community Tool, which is a concrete menu of strategies created to offer community members realistic ways they can effect positive change in their food and activity environments. As the Strategic Alliance website notes, ENACT was designed "to complement current education and community efforts and to empower local action to address priority issues. Working locally can make healthy eating and regular activity a realistic option for everyone, and can bubble up to affect state and national policy." Additionally, as a part of the ENACT project, PI also manages the ENACT Local Policy Database that catalogues promising policies in nutrition and activity to provide a reference point for local policy makers, health advocates and the media on concrete examples of what’s being tried/adopted in other locales, to demonstrate physical activity / nutrition-related policies that are emerging, and facilitate networking among local policymakers and advocates.
THRIVE a community assessment tool that helps communities bolster factors to improve community health and reduce disparities experienced by racial and ethnic minorities.
Prevention Institute also responds to current issues in health with analysis and recommendations. Recently, Prevention Institute and PolicyLink co-authored a memo to Congress, "Strengthening What Works: Critical Provisions for Prevention and Public Health in Health Reform Legislation", detailing the importance of community prevention and why preventative strategies must be a vital part of any meaningful reform on health care.
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Prevention is Primary
Recently, Prevention Institute published its first full-length book, Prevention is Primary: Strategies for Community Wellbeing, a landmark work on current issues in public health and primary prevention strategies, co-edited by Larry Cohen and Sana Chehimi of Prevention Institute along with Vivian Chavez of San Francisco State University. The text was published March 23, 2007 by Jossey-Bass and is written primarily for Master’s level public health, public policy and social welfare students to underscore the value and promise of prevention and to frame its practice as a key social and economic justice issue.
The institute’s founder and Executive Director is Larry Cohen, MSW.