Samaritan Behavioral Health, Inc. (hereinafter known as SBHI) has received a one-year grant from the Catholic Health Initiatives to develop a replicable model of violence prevention in the greater Dayton community. The goal of this program is to engage the community in a best practice model of violence prevention that fosters systemic change over time. The first year of funding for the program is directed toward planning and limited implementation of preventative services.
The objectives of the initial effort coordinated by SBHI include:
Expanding a community network of violence prevention
Conducting a community youth risk behavior survey
Organizing a centralized violence prevention clearinghouse
Designing and posting a violence prevention page on the website
Providing violence prevention classes to 700 students
This SBHI initiative has a strong student program component targeting five key school sites reaching 700 middle school students in the 5th and 6th grades. The school-based program will include a student survey on violence prevention compared to national data, six-weeks of classroom-based curriculum, as well as skill building exercises.
Catholic Health Initiatives has strongly recommended the United Roadmap as a best practice model for the development of the “United Against Violence of Greater Dayton Collaborative”. This roadmap has been nationally developed based on best practices by the Prevention Institute, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the UCLA School of Public Health. The roadmap stresses three fundamental components to create a community-based violence prevention strategy, including:
Partnerships
Prevention
Strategy
The Unity Program also has a continuum model for looking at community strategies and programs for violence prevention which includes:
SBHI is partially funded by the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board for
Montgomery County
and the Preble County Mental Health and Recovery Board.
