Outreach & Capacity Building

Injury-Free NC

A UNC IPRC partnership with the NC Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health, Injury and Violence Prevention Branch (DHHS IVPB).

Injury-Free NC aims to promote workforce capacity in the primary prevention of injury and violence throughout our state. A workforce capacity needs assessment of the North Carolina injury and violence prevention workforce identified specific training needs among practitioners at both local and state levels. In response to these needs, UNC IPRC is collaborating with the Division of Public Health Injury and Violence Prevention Branch (DHHS IVPB) to develop and implement training programs and tools for local practitioners through the Injury-Free NC Academy and workshops to increase the capacity of researchers and practitioners to utilize data from the NC Violent Death Reporting System (NC-VDRS). Recent training programs included building the capacity of multi-sector teams across NC to establish harm reduction programs, including syringe exchange programs; and implementing best practices for suicide prevention with youth.

Building the Capacity of Community Stakeholders through the Injury-Free NC Academy

Created in 2012, the Injury-Free NC Academy trains teams of diverse community stakeholders in injury and violence prevention (IVP), building community-level capacity for the organizations to implement and sustain initiatives to reduce injury and violence in their communities. The Academy is designed to provide public health practitioners with injury topic-specific content and key skills (e.g., coalition building, community programming, and logic model building) that enable them to implement evidence-based interventions in their communities. Each year, Injury-Free NC Academy solicits teams of IVP practitioners from across organizations and disciplines to participate in two 2-day trainings, with coaching, technical assistance, and follow-up support to help the teams apply what they learned in the Academy.

Given the decades-long relationship between the IPRC and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health, Injury and Violence Prevention Branch (NC IVPB), and the expertise housed within each, the two organizations are a natural fit to deliver these comprehensive training programs through the Injury-Free NC Academy and partner on Academy oversight and governance.

Harm reduction-based services involve practical strategies to reduce or mitigate the negative consequences associated with drug use and other criminalized and stigmatized behaviors, which can affect access to healthcare and the quality of care received.

The Injury-Free NC Academy on Harm Reduction as Transformative Practice focuses on moving from theory to practice and implementing a variety of harm reduction programs to serve people who use drugs (PWUD). The purpose of this Academy is to work with community-based organizations, local health departments, coalitions, and individuals who want to learn more about harm reduction principles and how to incorporate them into overdose prevention work.

The Children’s Justice Task Force, a branch of the North Carolina Governor’s Crime Commission, awarded the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center (UNC IPRC) a $419,000 grant to develop, implement, and evaluate an ACEs-focused training program to enable NC court officials to foster a more trauma-informed environment for children and adults interacting with the legal system.

The funding was used to develop individual-level training and courthouse-level support. Both the online training content and the courthouse resources were developed in consultation with experts from a multidisciplinary advisory board of practitioners and engaged researchers representing the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina, Wake County’s Children’s Advocacy Center (SAFEchild), Duke University’s Bolch Judicial Institute, and the Kellin Foundation. Additionally, the UNC BTIC-NC team consulted with experts from the UNC School of Government and the Departments of Maternal and Child Health and Health Behavior within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, the University of North Carolina’s Injury Prevention Research Center, and the North Carolina Division of Public Health’s Injury and Violence Prevention Branch co-host the Opioid Settlement Academy. The Academy will bring together counties who are receiving funds from the North Carolina opioid settlements to support them in preparing to implement or expand a new opioid settlement strategy.

The goal is to prepare teams from North Carolina counties and municipalities to implement or expand one of the Exhibit A strategies from the Memorandum of Agreement on the allocation and use of opioid settlement funds. During the Academy, teams walk through a program planning process to prepare for strategy implementation or expansion.

Vision Zero is a traffic safety approach focused on eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries, while improving access to safe, sustainable, and equitable mobility for everyone. Setting zero as the only acceptable target, Vision Zero sends a strong message: deaths on our transportation network are unacceptable and preventable.

Vision Zero is grounded in the Safe System approach. The Safe System approach is based on the ethical principle that no loss of life is acceptable while acknowledging that humans make mistakes and that human bodies have a limited ability to tolerate crash impacts. In a Safe System, those mistakes should never lead to death. Applying the Safe Systems approach means taking proactive steps to implement effective strategies that prevent the most dangerous crashes (e.g., use of roundabouts to prevent angle crashes or interlock devices to prevent impaired driving) as well as ensuring that when crashes occur, they are not severe (e.g., lowering speed limits and quick emergency response).

The Federal Highway Association, has proposed six key, organizing principles of the Safe System approach (United States Department of Transportation, 2022 ):

• Deaths and serious injuries are unacceptable: While no crashes are desirable, the Safe System approach prioritizes crashes that result in death and serious injuries, since no one should experience either when using the transportation system.
• Humans make mistakes: People will inevitably make mistakes that can lead to crashes, but the transportation system can be designed and operated to accommodate human mistakes and injury tolerances and avoid death and serious injuries.
• Humans are vulnerable: People have limits for tolerating crash forces before death and serious injury occurs; therefore, it is critical to design and operate a transportation system that is human-centric and accommodates human vulnerabilities.
• Responsibility is shared: All stakeholders (transportation system users and managers, vehicle manufacturers, etc.) must ensure that crashes don’t lead to fatal or serious injuries.
• Safety is proactive: Proactive tools should be used to identify and mitigate latent risks in the transportation system, rather than waiting for crashes to occur and reacting afterwards.
• Redundancy is crucial: Reducing risks requires that all parts of the transportation system are strengthened, so that if one part fails, the other parts still protect people.

The Collaborative Learning Institute (CLI) is a no-cost training program for injury and violence prevention practitioners in North Carolina. The primary focus of this training is to demonstrate how a systems thinking approach can be utilized to strengthen collaborative partnerships and/or prevention initiatives through targeting shared risk and protective factors (SRPFs) for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Training activities focus on gaining a deeper understanding of SRPFs and systems thinking, learning how to utilize systems thinking tools to identify opportunities for strategic alignment, and hands on experience applying these tools to real world scenarios.