RPE Program
Sexual violence, including rape, is preventable.
Recognizing this, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. This landmark legislation established the Rape Prevention and Education (RPE) program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The goal of the RPE program is to strengthen sexual violence prevention efforts. It operates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and six U.S. territories.
The NC RPE program is the primary body tasked with the primary prevention of sexual violence in North Carolina. NCCASA is the Division of Public Health’s contracted training, technical assistance, and evaluation provider for RPE.
We take a three-pronged approach to implementing prevention strategies, approximately 50% of which are implemented along the individual and relationship level of the social ecology, and approximately 50% of which are implemented at the community and societal level:
- The North Carolina Sexual Violence Prevention Advisory Council (NC SVPAC), a state-level advisory body of violence prevention subject matter experts.
- Support of locally funded subrecipients in the implementation, facilitation, and evaluation of local primary prevention programming, to include a multidisciplinary Community Task Force working on primary prevention of sexual violence.
- Intentional alignment of our community and societal level prevention strategies with other state-level violence prevention bodies across the state, including DELTA, the State Health Department Injury and Violence Prevention Branch, NC Core State Violence and Injury Prevention Program, NC Essentials for Childhood, and the UNC Chapel Hill Injury Prevention Research Center.
North Carolina’s Department of Public Health, Injury and Violence Prevention Branch, currently funds 10 programs around the state to plan and implement sexual violence primary prevention programming in communities and on college campuses, with an emphasis on community and society level risk and protective factors for sexual violence.
For more information on North Carolina’s State Action Plan to prevent sexual violence, see our NCCASA Prevention Plan at a Glance.
Questions?
Contact Linda Chamiec-Case, Prevention Education Program Manager