Impact

Over the last 14 years, PREVNet has co-created research and resources specifically for educators, for other professionals who work with children/youth, for caregivers/parents, and for youth themselves. Below are a few examples of PREVNet’s impacts:

1)  Establishing a Highly Effective Knowledge Mobilization Network   

Over the past 14 years, we reached over 20 million stakeholders and PREVNet’s key messages are cited on 100,000+ websites. With our partners, we co-created over 150 resources to reach professionals who work with children and youth, caregivers/parents, children and youth themselves, and members of the general public including: PREVNet’s website, social media platforms, teen dating violence website, cyberbullying website, in-person workshops, conferences, presentations, online trainings, Facebook Live town hall, live in-class webinars, online quizzes, videos, TV programming, PSAs, and media interviews.

2) Reducing Bullying

Since PREVNet began in 2006, the proportion of students who report bullying others has decreased by 62% and the proportion of students who report both bullying others and being victimized has dropped by 44%.[1] We believe this decrease is in part a result of the work of all members of PREVNet and its cumulative impact across the country. Through partnerships, PREVNet leads a societal intervention by co-creating resources to enhance the practices of those involved in the lives of children and youth.

3)  Highlighting Importance of Healthy Relationships

The central tenet of PREVNet is that bullying is a relationship problem that requires relationship solutions.  Dr. Pepler proposed this as the framing for PREVNet’s work and it has directed and influenced all the work in PREVNet.  She explains the critical importance of healthy relationships on the genes and developing minds of children in her TEDx York University talk "How Can We Grow Healthy Children?"  Bullying as a relationship problem is now internationally accepted as central to understanding bullying and provides strong guidance on how to intervene. Through PREVNet’s work, the focus on healthy relationships is now forefront of prevention science, youth development, and public health policy in Canada and beyond. 

4)  Co-Creating and Evaluating the Healthy Relationships Training Module  

In working with PREVNet’s partners, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Scouts, and the Canadian Red Cross, we discovered a substantial gap in training for those who work with children and youth in Canada. To fill this gap, we co-created the Healthy Relationships Training Module (HRTM). The impact of the HRTM is that we have changed professional practice in more than 100 organizations that train over 75,000 adults each year. In addition, the Canadian Red Cross has reached over 1.1 million youth with HRTM content. Pre-post survey results of these workshops revealed that participants showed significant gains in their knowledge about healthy relationships and bullying prevention, and significant gains in their level of confidence and intention to promote healthy relationships among the youth with whom they work. In addition, in Alberta, HRTM was adapted and implemented in a province-wide initiative to prevent domestic violence. Currently, we have five online webinars based on the HRTM.

5) Leveraging and Evaluating our Bullying Prevention Toolkit to Turn Policy into Practice in Ontario, Quebec and Beyond

PREVNet was asked by the Ontario Ministry of Education to create the Bullying Prevention Toolkit for all 72 school boards (with nearly 5,000 schools), which is a bilingual toolkit that includes practical, innovative, high-quality and evidence-based tools and resources to prevent bullying and promote healthy relationships. Over 5,000 people have accessed the toolkit online and it has been presented to over 20 school boards. In partnership with the Quebec Ministry of Education, the Jasmin Roy Foundation, and Peace Network for Social Harmony, PREVNet has also been part of Les Grandes Rencontres, a three-year province-wide educators’ training program, launched in fall 2016. More than 2,000 people from the Quebec education sector have been trained on aspects of the Bullying Prevention Toolkit in the past 3 years and these participants are sharing their learnings at their local schools. In addition, PREVNet produced bilingual monthly newsletters for educators featuring tips and tools from the toolkit.

6) Uniting with Family Channel’s Social Awareness Campaign: Empowering Children to Stand UP! Against Bullying

With Family Channel, PREVNet has collaborated from 2003 to 2019 to create television episodes, social marketing campaigns, and teacher and parent guides to reach millions of children and adults to prevent bullying. The goal was to increase children’s awareness that when peers intervene, bullying stops within 10 seconds, 57% of the time. This partnership mobilized evidence-based knowledge each November during Bullying Awareness Week. This multi-platform campaign featured a dedicated website complete with PREVNet-created bilingual resources, a national in-school rally tour, and special bullying prevention TV programming.

7) Partnering with PRIMUS Telecommunications to Create Canada’s First E-learning Program to Help Caregivers Prevent Cyberbullying

PRIMUS research showed that parents were more concerned about cyberbullying than about teen pregnancy, drug use or alcohol use. As a result, PRIMUS partnered with PREVNet to launch a new cyberbullying resource website for parents: Parenting in a Digital Age: Understanding Kids and Technology. The site includes specific materials for caregivers/parents and educators, and provides support to help with the varying social needs of children at three different stages: young kids, tweens and teenagers. The site also features a monthly blog. There have been over 30,000 visits to the site since its launch in September 2017.

8) Creating an On-Line Legislation Tool for Educators and Parents

Each province and territory has different definitions of bullying, different procedures to address bullying, and different requirements for prevention and intervention. This makes it difficult for caregivers/ parents and educators to understand their rights and strategies to support their children. Therefore, PREVNet developed a tool with an interactive map that outlined bullying legislation and policy in each province and territory, as well as the rights and responsibilities of parents and educators. All of the updated policies are available in both English and French.

9) Creating a National Youth Advisory Committee that Launched the #SpreadKindness Campaign

PREVNet worked with its 15-member National Youth Advisory Committee (NYAC) to co-create six innovative public education campaigns youth can use to foster healthy relationships with their peers, dating partners, family, teachers and other socializing adults. Read more at https://www.prevnet.ca/spreadkindness. To extend the NYAC’s campaign, PREVNet formed a new partnership in 2018 with Live Different, a Canadian charity focused on positive youth empowerment. The NYAC helped co-create content for Live Different’s 2018-19 cross-country school tour “Kindness Changes Everything,” reaching 100,000 youth.

10)  Enhancing Professional Practice: PREVNet’s Annual Conferences – Forums for Knowledge Mobilization

Researchers, graduate students and national youth-serving organizations seldom have the opportunity to come together to focus on bullying prevention, learn about cutting-edge research and best practices, and make new connections. PREVNet’s conferences provided such a forum. PREVNet has hosted 10 annual conferences attended by more than 2,700 professionals and parents who had access to evidence-based knowledge, strategies and tools to promote mental health, promote healthy relationships and prevent bullying. PREVNet has published 4 volumes based on conferences workshops.

To learn more about PREVNet’s Impacts, see our annual reports

[1] Craig, W., Lambe, L., & McIvor, T. (2016). Bullying and fighting. In J. G. Freeman, M. King, & W. Pickett (eds.), Health behaviour in school-aged children (HBSC) in Canada: Focus on relationships (pp. 167–182). Ottawa, ON: Public Health Agency Canada. Available from http://healthycanadians. gc.ca/publications/science-research-sciences-recherches/health-behaviour-children-canada2015-comportements-sante-jeunes/index-eng.php