CSAW works alongside communities to understand what makes violence less likely and turn that knowledge into practical action that strengthens childhood safety and wellbeing.
What would it take to substantially reduce harm in childhood?
Responding when children and families experience harm is essential. But preventing violence also requires action before harm occurs. CSAW works upstream, helping communities understand and strengthen the conditions that support childhood safety and wellbeing—belonging, connection, agency, opportunity, trusted relationships, and community support.
We believe everyone has a role in creating those conditions.
How we turn prevention into practice
As part of the University of Oregon’s nationally recognized College of Education, CSAW combines the research capacity of a Carnegie R1 university with community knowledge and experience to strengthen prevention approaches, evaluate what’s working, and share what we learn.
Research & Evaluation
We study childhood violence, safety, and wellbeing and help communities understand what's working, for whom, and under what conditions.
Prevention & Advocacy
We work with partners to turn research and community knowledge into practical approaches to prevention.
Community Engagement & Coalition Building
We bring people and organizations together to learn from one another, strengthen connections, and develop locally informed approaches to prevention.
Across these areas, we are working to strengthen youth and survivor engagement and advance equity in how we approach prevention.
Strengthening youth engagement in our work.
We believe young people should have meaningful opportunities to influence decisions that affect them. CSAW is working to create more consistent ways for youth perspectives to inform our work—and learning what authentic youth partnership requires.
“Since we’re giving you the information, use it to your max potential. Do as much as you can with the information in every way that you can.”
Learn about our youth engagement work →
What we're learning
Preventing childhood violence is long-term work. We conduct research, evaluate prevention efforts, and use what we learn to inform what comes next.
50,000+ adults participated in prevention training
Through Protect Our Children, prevention training has been delivered across 19 rural Oregon regions and Siskiyou County, California.
Seven years of evaluation
More than 10,000 pre- and post-surveys, comparison surveys, focus groups, and partner feedback have helped us examine changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and prevention efforts over time.
Learning directly from Oregon youth
OCAPS is designed to measure young people's experiences of abuse, neglect, and identity-based violence and gather their perspectives on resilience and prevention.
Prevention in Practice
