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 capacity of an 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
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
We conduct research, evaluate prevention in real-world settings, and learn alongside youth, survivors, families, and communities. What we learn shapes what comes next.
12,000+ Community Voices
Since our earliest work, we have listened to community members about what children, families, and communities need to thrive. More than 12,000 Lane County residents helped shape our early prevention work—and taught us that prevention must be grounded in local knowledge, local conditions, and place-based leadership.
7 Years of Evaluation
Sustained prevention requires sustained learning. Through Protect Our Children, we collected more than 10,000 pre- and post-surveys and comparison surveys, along with focus groups and partner feedback, to examine changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and community prevention efforts over seven years.
15 Years of Prevention Learning
Fifteen years of research, evaluation, prevention practice, and community partnership have helped sharpen our understanding of what prevention requires. We are identifying conditions communities can deliberately strengthen to make violence less likely and safety, belonging, connection, agency, and wellbeing more likely.
Prevention in Practice
