Advancing Primary Prevention in Human Services: Convening Findings

• Incorporating primary prevention into human services delivery can uproot the causes of adverse outcomes by reducing risk factors and promoting protective factors, creating the safety and stability needed to avoid adverse experiences in the first place. [...] • Primary prevention can foster equity and justice by addressing the deeper systemic issues, such as poverty, that lead to adverse experiences. • To realize the potential of primary prevention in human services, we need a national framework for delivering family supports and prevention services that centers equity and elevates lived expertise as well as policies and services that situate prima [...] Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is exploring how to advance the use of primary prevention in human services, to create opportunity, support, or intervene before negative health or socialMarch 2023 ISSUE BRIEF 2 outcomes occur. [...] Primary prevention as means of fostering equity and justice Equity and justice considerations are at the heart of the need for human services to shift to primary/primordial prevention. [...] A CONVENING TO ADVANCE PRIMARY PREVENTION To establish a foundation for increasing the use of evidence-based primary prevention in human services systems, ASPE worked with Mathematica to plan and facilitate an HHS Convening on Advancing Primary Prevention in Human Services in August 2022. [...] The focus on prevention of youth and family homelessness furthered HHS’s efforts as a member of the U.S. [...] What are the future directions for advancing primary prevention in human services? Defining evidence- based primary prevention services Evidence-based primary prevention services include programs, policies, or other strategies that have been evaluated and demonstrated to be effective in preventing adverse outcomes from occurring by promoting protective factors and reducing risk factors. [...] A shift to also include primordial prevention can prevent the occurrence of poverty and more fully address the upstream social determinants of health. [...] Second, determining how to define success and measure the effectiveness of prevention is key. [...] Poverty and trauma as key risk factors that are also barriers to many of the other risk and protective factors Barriers specific to human services 1.