Skip to main content

EVENT RECAP: The Public Health-Informed Approach to Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention

On Feb. 28, NCITE hosted a webinar on the public health approach to prevention and how it can protect communities from terrorism and targeted violence.

A flyer for the event. The background is gray and the text is red and black. It features headshots of Sarah DeGue, Bill Braniff, and Erin Grace.

On Feb. 28, NCITE hosted the first installment of the NCITE Speaker Series with Sarah DeGue, Ph.D., senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Bill Braniff, director of the Department for Homeland Security’s (DHS) Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3). The panelists discussed how a public health-informed approach can be applied to terrorism and targeted violence prevention.

You can watch the full panel below:

Key Takeaways

  • DHS partners with states to create strategies for targeted violence and terrorism prevention, with a focus on measurement and evaluation. These partnerships are widespread, but there is room for more expansion.
  • This issue is holistic and requires multiple agencies, community members, and interdisciplinary research to continue advancing.
  • Violence is costly – both for human life and economically. In addition to reducing casualties and community fear, there are long-term benefits of prevention, including reduced criminal justice and medical costs.
  • Future research will see improved partnerships to connect behavioral threat assessment teams to referral networks of mental health experts, work with researchers to study rehabilitation and reintegration programming, add targeted violence as an outcome measure in existing and future violence prevention studies, and add targeted violence as an outcome measure in existing and future violence prevention studies.

Discussion Recap

The work conducted by DeGue’s team addresses violence prevention for multiple forms of violence- child abuse and neglect, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, youth violence, community violence, and suicide. DeGue discussed how the team’s iterative approach occurs:

“We work ... to advance the evidence in each of these areas, which include defining and monitoring the problem, identifying risk and protective factors, developing and testing prevention strategies, and then moving those effective prevention strategies into the field.

  • This work fills the public health sector to both utilize and inform those who work in education, criminal justice, and businesses. DeGue described violence prevention as a “community strategy,” rather than the sole responsibility of a single entity.
  • There is significant overlap between violence prevention and intervention across different types of violence, meaning what might be demonstrated to be effective for child abuse and neglect can also be used to inhibit community violence.

Braniff issued a call for community action, particularly among researchers, to continue improving the evidence base for terrorism and targeted violence prevention. Braniff described targeted violence:

“It may or may not be ideologically motivated, but it involves an incident of violence in which a known or knowable attacker selects a target ahead of time … whether that target is an individual or a symbolic target, like a place of worship or a school.”

  • The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships has adopted a public health-informed approach to targeted violence and terrorism prevention, building on decades of research and practice in the field.
  • The organization's internal research repository contains over 200 scholarly articles and reports on risk and protective factors, prevention programs, and evaluations of targeted violence and terrorism.
  • 73% of scholarly articles in a repository are published in fields outside of terrorism studies, reflecting a multidisciplinary approach to prevention efforts.
  • Braniff emphasized that violence is preventable, citing CDC data showing that over 80% of school shooters and 50% of mass casualty attackers ideate about violence before acting. This means there is a window for intervention.

Resources

CP3 Website
Connect to a CP3 Regional Prevention Coordinator: CP3Field@hq.dhs.gov

CP3 Events: cp3preventionevents@hq.dhs.gov
TVTP Grants Information: www.dhs.gov/tvtpgrants
Government Prevention Resources: www.dhs.gov/prevention
Subscribe to the CP3 Listserv: https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHS/subscriber/new

For Researchers:

For Educators: Learn about Invent2Prevent

CDC Violence Prevention Home Page
CDC Resources for Action
CDC VetoViolence
CDC Dating Matters Toolkit

Panelists

Sarah DeGue, Ph.D., senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

degue.jpg

Sarah DeGue is a senior scientist in the Research and Evaluation Branch of the Division of Violence Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and scientific lead for CDC’s Dating Matters® teen dating violence prevention initiative. For more than 15 years, DeGue has served as a federal subject matter expert on the etiology and prevention of sexual and gender-based violence and evidence-based violence prevention. Key efforts have included systematic reviews of primary prevention strategies for sexual and dating violence perpetration, sexual violence risk and protective factors, an economic estimate of the societal costs of sexual violence, and CDC’s first technical package to prevent sexual violence, with more than 70 peer-reviewed publications on violence etiology and prevention. As the lead for the Dating Matters initiative, DeGue’s work has focused on development, evaluation, and national dissemination of the first comprehensive dating violence prevention model to ensure widespread adoption of this evidence-based strategy in communities across the U.S. Her other recent work has addressed the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on violence, deaths due to the use of lethal force by law enforcement, and the role of public health in the prevention of targeted violence and terrorism.

DeGue is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology specializing in forensic evaluation. In addition to her role at CDC, she serves as an adjunct associate professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. During her career at CDC, she has served as a scientific advisor and collaborator on multiple rigorous outcome studies examining the effectiveness of approaches to prevent sexual violence, teen dating violence, and youth violence. She has served as advisor and subject matter expert on evidence-based violence prevention to the White House, Department of Education, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, colleges and universities, foreign governments, and state and local health departments. DeGue represents CDC on multiple White House and interagency task forces, workgroups, and interagency policy committees.

Bill Braniff, director of the Department for Homeland Security’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3)

braniff.jpg

William Braniff is the director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) within the Department of Homeland Security. Within this capacity, he leads the department’s efforts to strengthen our country’s ability to prevent targeted violence and terrorism through funding, training, increased public awareness, and the establishment of partnerships across every level of government, the private sector, and in local communities. Braniff previously served as the START director and a professor of the practice at the University of Maryland, the director of practitioner education at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, and an instructor in the Department of Social Sciences. Braniff is a graduate of the United States Military Academy. Following his Company Command in the U.S. Army, he attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies where he received a master’s degree in international relations. Braniff then served as a foreign affairs specialist for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Braniff has a keen interest in the field of targeted violence and terrorism prevention, bringing extensive experience to DHS. He spoke at the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February 2015, and the United We Stand Summit in 2022. Braniff has testified before Congress on five occasions and has appeared regularly in national and international news media. He previously served as a member of the editorial board of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague, the RESOLVE Network Research Advisory Board, the Prosecution Project Advisory Board, the Hedayah Center International Advisory Board, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism Independent Advisory Committee, and a non-voting advisor to the Board of CHC Global. He was also a founding board member of We the Veterans, an organization of veterans and military families dedicated to strengthening American democracy.