Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center Partners to Launch Kentucky Injury-Free Academy
The Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (KIPRC), part of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, is partnering with the Safe States Alliance and the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center (UNCIPRC) to implement a pilot Kentucky Injury-Free Academy.
The Kentucky Injury-Free Academy builds on the successful model of the Injury-Free NC Academy, launched in North Carolina in 2012, which is a leader in advancing community-based violence prevention. This program addresses the root causes of violence by focusing on a Shared Risk and Protective Factors (SRPF) approach to understand and prevent violence across communities. SRPF is a public health approach that considers how risk and protective factors interact to influence health and quality of life outcomes. The Injury-Free NC Academy then uses these findings to equip local teams to prevent violence by promoting primary prevention, data-driven planning, coalition-building, evidence-based policymaking, and program evaluation. This has enabled communities in North Carolina to implement tailored, sustainable strategies to reduce violence.
The Kentucky pilot aims to adapt this model, bringing together diverse local and regional teams to address the interconnected drivers of violence in their communities, with the goal of creating safer and healthier environments across the state. The project also will test a new SRPF Academy manual designed for scalability in other states, while strengthening community approaches to primary prevention in Kentucky.
“The people doing the work that will be participating in the academy know the issues in their communities and how to serve their communities. I hope this academy will help provide opportunities to find new ways to support their communities through new research or new connections,” said Dr. Jacqueline Seals, DrPH, Assistant Professor in KIPRC and the Department of Health Management and Policy.
Academy Structure
Following the Injury-Free NC Academy structure, KIPRC will recruit and train teams of representatives from public health, law enforcement, education, and social services to address the root causes of violence. This program will focus on SRPF to help prevent violence through community-centered strategies tailored specifically for Kentucky. Throughout three training sessions, teams will develop and implement customized projects that address common risk and protective factors within their communities. The goal is for each team to create actionable plans that mitigate shared risks, promote protective factors, and enhance community resilience.
“This academy will help connect programs and other violence prevention researchers across the state to help support the prevention efforts and foster new collaborations and hopefully new opportunities,” Seals added.
“While many organizations across Kentucky utilize shared risk and protective factors in their work, this will provide a larger formalization and framework for this concept,” Catherine Hines, KIPRC Program Manager, said. “Also, it will provide additional resources and tools for these community organizations that work in the violence prevention space. We will also use this framework to consider sustainability for programming, and we hope that this will be beneficial over time.”
KIPRC, in collaboration with Safe States and UNCIPRC, will provide logistical support to coordinate the recruitment of cross-sector teams, schedule training sessions with subject matter experts and dedicated coaches, and organize in-person sessions that support real-time collaboration.
To help recruit local teams, Hines said they are working across numerous statewide collaborative groups, such as the Kentucky Safety and Prevention Alliance Network, which has over 700 partners across the state, to begin to raise awareness about this project for potential teams to apply.
Evaluation and Expected Outcomes
KIPRC will conduct a structured evaluation process to measure the Academy’s effectiveness and participant progress. This data will guide ongoing improvements and support future adaptations of the Academy model in other states.
“UNCIPRC has provided us with a robust evaluation packet that will include identifying outcomes such as new partnerships, new knowledge, new skills, improved confidence, and intention to apply information learned from the training sessions,” Hines said.
The Kentucky Injury-Free Academy aims to drive meaningful, lasting change across Kentucky communities by enhancing cross-sector collaboration, strengthening local capacity to implement evidence-based violence prevention strategies, and fostering safer, more resilient communities.
KIPRC is a unique partnership between the Kentucky Department for Public Health (DPH) and the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health. KIPRC serves both as an academic injury prevention research center and as the DPH’s designee or “bona fide agent” for statewide injury prevention and control.
This resource was developed using funds made available from Safe States through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Creating Safer States by Advancing Health Equity, Injury, and Violence Prevention), Award # 1 NU49CE000001-02, CFDA 93.136). The views expressed in written materials or publications do not necessarily reflect the official policies of Safe States or CDC, nor does the mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by Safe States or the U.S. Government.