STRYVE: Striving To Reduce Youth Violence Everywhere

STRYVE is a national initiative led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to prevent youth violence.

To realize its vision—safe and healthy youth who can achieve their full potential as connected and contributing members of thriving, violence-free families, schools, and communities—STRYVE is working to:

Increase public health leadership to prevent youth violence;
Promote the widespread adoption of youth violence prevention strategies based on the best available evidence; and
Reduce the rates of youth violence on a national scale.

Through its interacting components, STRYVE helps communities take a public health approach to preventing youth violence—stopping it before it even starts.

Watch videos about STRYVE to learn more.

STRYVE Tools, Training, and Resources for Communities

Effective youth violence prevention requires the infrastructure within communities to convene multi-sector coalitions to implement and sustain prevention efforts over time, information on what has worked, and guidance on how successful efforts can be disseminated. A cornerstone of STRYVE is guidance on actions that communities can take to plan and implement prevention approaches based on the best available evidence to help save lives. Two of CDC’s resources for communities include the following:

STRYVE Tools and Training on VetoViolence—provides the latest information, tools, training, and links to a collaborative workspace to help communities plan, implement, and evaluate an approach to youth violence prevention that is tailored to the needs and strengths of their community.
UNITY —Urban Networks Increasing Thriving Youth—works with large urban centers to enhance their readiness for violence prevention, help organize their planning, and increase their capacity to address youth violence using a public health approach.

STRYVE Communities

In August 2011 the following four local health departments were awarded funds totaling $4.5 million over a five-year project period to implement “Striving To Reduce Youth Violence Everywhere (STRYVE) Through Local Public Health Leadership”:

The purpose of this cooperative agreement is to increase the capacity of local public health departments and their partners to use youth violence prevention strategies that are based on the best available evidence. The four health departments are charged with:

Creating a comprehensive plan to prevent youth violence in their community.
Implementing appropriate and feasible youth violence prevention programs, policies, and practices based on best available evidence.
Tracking and measuring improvement in organizational and community capacity to prevent youth violence.
Developing an evaluation plan to track and measure the implementation of the youth violence prevention plan.
Producing a sustainability plan identifying the resources needed to sustain the coalition and its implemented activities.