Session: Building a Province-Wide Healthy Relationships Climate: Involving Schools to Create Healthy Communities in Alberta, Canada (Society for Prevention Research 25th Annual Meeting)

The goal of this symposium is to highlight how a university-government partnership has worked to create a healthy youth relationships climate in Alberta, Canada over the past 6 years, with a particular focus on how teachers and schools have been engaged in this goal. To date, the partnership has provided almost $1.5 million in targeted prevention dollars, and has included 241 schools in 32 school divisions. The symposium supports the special conference theme of Building Healthy Communities through Investments in Prevention, as it will discuss how government and private investments have supported large-scale prevention efforts to build emotionally healthier communities in a Canadian province. This symposium also supports the theme of Dissemination and Implementation Science, since the included papers will also discuss a number of efforts designed to bridge the research-practice gap around promoting social-emotional learning and preventing youth violence in school settings. The symposium brings together three researchers who have been working on different aspects of the strategy: pre-service education and professional development with teachers; implementation tracking and monitoring; and the establishment of school-community partnerships.

The first paper presents two approaches to building teacher capacity around social-emotional learning and violence prevention with youth, including an inter-disciplinary graduate level certificate program and an inter-professional symposium series for pre-service teachers. This paper demonstrates how faculty partnerships can be leveraged to create systems change through university-based programs.

The second paper discusses how perceptions of evidence-based programs and school climate differentially impact healthy relationships program implementation success among middle school teachers from across Alberta. This paper illustrates the importance of understanding teachers’ own beliefs and contexts when implementing efforts to create healthier communities.

The third paper summarizes the creation and dissemination of a school-community partnership system designed to support policies, programs and practices that promote a whole school, whole community, whole child model of prevention. This paper presents key decisions made during the design of this system, as well as the process of inviting schools and communities to participate.

At the conclusion of the presentations, the discussant will review the papers and facilitate dialogue amongst presenters and attendees. Given the role many SPR members play in supporting school-based prevention efforts to build healthier communities, the papers in this symposium should be of broad interest to conference attendees.