EMPOWER

Building Evaluation Capacity for Rape Prevention and Education Funded Programs

Beginning in 2004, the NDDoH partnered with the North Dakota Council on Abused Women’s Services/Coalition Against Sexual Assault in North Dakota (NDCAWS/CASAND) under the Rape Prevention and Education grant from the U.S. Centers For Disease Control to initiate a planning process to broaden the focus of the current sexual violence prevention efforts. The NDDoH was awarded the Building Evaluation Capacity for Rape Prevention and Education Funded Programs (EMPOWER) grant in September 2005 to build the capacity of the Department to administer the RPE grant to focus on primary prevention of sexual violence. RPE funds are provided to local rape crisis programs to plan and implement sexual violence primary prevention programming.

The NDDoH contracted with NDCAWS/CASAND to manage that project which includes the expansion of the taskforce to form the North Dakota Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence State Prevention Team (SPT). The focus of the group is to develop a comprehensive working primary prevention domestic violence and sexual violence state plan. (See State Prevention Team Link for more information.)

The EMPOWER program is a planning, implementation, evaluation, and sustainability capacity building cooperative agreement. CDC works intensively with EMPOWER states within a collaborative learning environment to build the individual capacity of EMPOWER State Capacity Building Teams (SCBT). SCBTs generally consist of the health department or other state agency that administers the RPE program, the sexual assault coalition and the empowerment evaluator. Individual capacity building focuses on:

• using public health and prevention frameworks,
• using the principles of empowerment evaluation,
• facilitating the State Prevention Team through the steps of (GTO IPV/SV), and
• Integrating an intersectional analysis into the planning process.

In addition to individual capacity building, EMPOWER includes a focus on sexual violence prevention system capacity. EMPOWER states helped conceive a system capacity continuum and develop a corresponding measurement tool to assess state sexual violence prevention system capacity. Results of the state assessment will be considered at each step of the planning process culminating in a state plan that includes goals related to increasing prevention system capacity.

North Dakota is one of the four State Health Department’s funded through EMPOWER. Two other states currently have MOU’s with CDC to participate in EMPOWER, although they don’t receive funding.

North Dakota Intimate Partner Violence/Sexual Violence State Prevention Team

For more information, please contact:
Kelly Moe Litke
EMPOWER Program Coordinator
701-255-6240 ext.16

[Email]