The Prevention Institute Story

Established in 1997, Prevention Institute began with humble beginnings, starting with two people and one small contract, working from a private home. But our vision was big. We were committed to advancing primary prevention as a strategy to save lives and money, reduce individual suffering, and improve community well-being.

In our first two decades, we drew on lessons from community practice and past successes in public health and other fields to develop a systematic methodology for primary prevention, applicable to almost any issue undermining health, safety, and wellbeing.

One of our earliest tools, the Spectrum of Prevention, identified six types of prevention interventions to help public health leaders understand that prevention goes beyond education.
Our Tool for Health and Resilience in Vulnerable Environments (THRIVE) helps communities understand how structural drivers, such as racism, unfold locally and allows them to act on the community determinants of health.
Our Collaboration Multiplier tool helps diverse sectors forge a shared vision and joint strategies by identifying similarities and differences across sectors to maximize shared impact.
Our Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience (ACE|R) framework supports communities experiencing adversity to recognize their strengths and incorporate healing into plans to promote health, safety, and wellbeing.
More recently, we created the System of Prevention framework by drawing on over two decades of organizational learning. The System of Prevention describes how systems have created health inequities and outlines how they must be redesigned to achieve health equity and racial justice.

We embrace our roles as disrupters, weavers, builders, and visionaries—drawing from Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem Map (Building Movement Project)—and with that purpose we have consistently pushed for policy and systems change, urging funders, decision-makers, and the public health sector to prioritize community and the public’s health. This means:

Transforming the policy approach to eating- and activity- related chronic illness by addressing environmental influences, corporate practices, and government responsibility
Catalyzing the first ongoing federal funding dedicated to prevention and public health
Publishing the first graduate-level textbook on prevention principles and practice
Linking complex community health issues that would otherwise remain siloed
Strengthening multisector collaboration and community partnerships for prevention and health equity
Insisting that violence be recognized as a public health issue and improving prevention practice to achieve safety
Elevating land use and the built environment as essential components of the public’s health
Applying a community prevention approach to address trauma, improve mental health and wellbeing, and prevent substance misuse
Calling on the public health sector to center community leadership and racial justice in practice
Embedding procedural, distributional, and structural equity objectives in practice

Building on the lessons and accomplishments of our first two decades, we began a new phase of evolution in late 2018. Throughout this transition, we have remained committed to upstream, population-level prevention. Our shifts include:

From preventing problems to promoting a positive vision: We initially focused on preventing injury, illness, violence, and chronic disease. However, we recognize that health is more than the absence of illness—it’s the physical, mental, and spiritual condition that allows people to thrive. Similarly, safety is more than the absence of injury, it is freedom from violence and the threat of violence. Wellbeing is more than the absence of mental health problems or substance misuse; it includes hope and aspiration, belonging and connection, trust, dignity, safety and control over one’s destiny. Today, our work is grounded in a positive vision for the future—emphasizing abundance over scarcity; collectivism and interdependence over individualism and self-reliance; and liberation and freedom over oppression and control.

From "prevention for all" to centering equity: Prevention benefits everyone, but our focus has become more explicit: prioritize communities that experience the greatest harm and that are most vulnerable to harm. We are focused on bridging health equity and racial justice, including strengthening our staff’s capacity to advance both. We are clear that achieving health, safety, and wellbeing means that societal systems and structures must be reimagined and redesigned for health equity and racial justice.

From systematic prevention methodology to community-driven solutions: Our early work emphasized developing tools for the public health field. As we deepened our community partnerships, we fully embraced the understanding that communities most burdened by inequities and injustice are best positioned to set priorities and drive solutions. Today, we have deepened our community-centered practice, partnering with communities to adapt our tools, and increasing our focus on building power with communities in support of community-driven change.

From "community wisdom" to uplifting contextual and experiential evidence: We have long valued community perspectives—which we once referred to as ‘community wisdom’. Following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2011 framework on understanding evidence, we advanced the concepts of contextual evidence(measurable community factors that influence prevention strategies)and experiential evidence (collective knowledge from community practice, expertise, and lived experience). We now embrace a comprehensive evidence base that elevates contextual and experiential evidence alongside research evidence.

From changing community conditions to driving community transformation: From the start, we have emphasized the unquestionable role of community conditions in shaping health, safety, and wellbeing outcomes. Early on, we focused on the importance of changing community conditions and how such changes can push back against harmful structures and systems. Today, we focus on how transforming community conditions directly contributes to creating healthy communities while also challenging the inequitable distribution of resources, power, and opportunity. Examples of where this emphasis is reflected include our Systems of Prevention and Health Equity work and our Federal and State-Based Policy & Advocacy.

Now based in four locations with a diverse and dedicated team, we hold upstream prevention, health equity, and racial justice--centered in community--as core to our work.

Primary prevention tools and frameworks

Spectrum of Prevention
THRIVE
Collaboration Multiplier
Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience framework
System of Prevention

Prevention Institute Accomplishments

We never do this work alone. And we are grateful to our many partners for working with us to achieve these accomplishments.

Capturing the Prevention Institute Story: Sample resources

Transforming the policy approach to eating- and activity- related chronic illness

A Decade of Advocacy: The Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments
Promising Strategies for Creating Healthy Eating and Active Living Environments

Catalyzing the first ongoing federal funding dedicated to prevention and public health

Reducing Health Care Costs through Prevention
Prevention as Part of the Stimulus
Prevention for a Healthier America: Investments in Disease Prevention Yield Significant Savings, Stronger Communities

Publishing the first graduate-level textbook on prevention

Prevention is Primary: Strategies for Community Wellbeing
Chapter 1: The imperative for primary prevention

Linking complex community health issues that would otherwise remain siloed

Connecting the Dots: An Overview of the Links Between Multiple Forms of Violence
Community Safety by Design: Preventing Violence through Land Use
Addressing the Intersection: Preventing Violence and Promoting Healthy Eating and Active Living

Strengthening multisector collaboration and community partnerships

Safety in All Policies- A Brief to Advance Multi-Sector Actions for a Safer California
Collaboration Multiplier

Insisting that violence be recognized as a public health issue and improving practice

Shifting the Paradigm: UNITY’s Impact on the Practice of Prevention
A Health Equity and Multisector Approach to Preventing Domestic Violence

Elevating land use and the built environment as essential components to the public’s health

Healthy Development without Displacement: Realizing the Vision of Healthy Communities for All
Park Equity, Life Expectancy, and Power Building Research Synopsis

Applying a community prevention approach to address trauma, improve mental health and wellbeing, and prevent substance misuse.

Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience Framework
Why? What? How? Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience Framework
Making Connections for Mental Health and Wellbeing Among Men and Boys
Community Development Innovation Review: Catalyzing Community Action for Mental Health and Wellbeing
Developing a Community-Trauma Informed Approach to the Opioid Epidemic in Ohio

Calling on the public health to center community leadership and racial justice in practice

Centering Racial Justice to Strengthen Public Health Ecosystems
How California’s Community-Based Organizations Filled the Gaps for Underserved Communities

Embedding procedural, distributional, and structural equity objectives in practice

Building Bridges: The Strategic Imperative for Advancing Health Equity and Racial Justice