Strategies

Focus heavily on reading and math achievement, enforce high behavioral expectations through a formal discipline system, lengthen instructional time, and increase feedback on teacher performance

Provide women with information about the risks and benefits of behaviors that affect their health before, during, and after pregnancy

Provide center-based programs that support cognitive and social development among young children from families with low incomes, with supports such as home visiting or parental education

Create a school culture of high behavioral and academic expectations, with intense tutoring, increased teacher performance feedback, lengthened instruction time, and health care services

Transition families and individuals experiencing homelessness into permanent housing quickly, often with supports such as short-term financial assistance, case management, landlord negotiations, etc.

Partner with doctors, nurse practitioners, and other medical professionals to incorporate literacy support into regular well-child visits, especially in lower income communities

Promote walking and biking to school through education, incentives, and environmental changes; often called SRTS

Promote abstinence from sexual activity, generally only with mention of condoms and birth control to highlight failure rates

Provide students from public schools, from low income backgrounds, or who have a high risk of dropping out and their families with information about social services and health care supports; also called community resource or family and community liaisons

Educate youth and college athletes, coaches, and parents about the severity of concussions in sports, proper prevention, detection, reporting, and treatment

Provide academic instruction to students during the summer, often along with enrichment activities such as art or outdoor activities

Provide short-term employment opportunities for youth, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds

Create designated tax districts that generate revenue to invest in affordable housing initiatives, blight remediation, and economic development efforts

Support school-, community-, and clinic-based teen pregnancy prevention programs such as comprehensive sex education, HIV/STI prevention and youth development efforts, service learning, etc.

Support a trauma-informed juvenile justice system to recognize and respond to trauma’s impact on youth through staff training and broad adoption of trauma-informed practices and policies

Place youth with mental, emotional, and behavioral health challenges in foster families that provide a structured, nurturing, therapeutic environment; also called Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC)

Place severely and chronically delinquent youth in foster families that are trained in structured behavior management and connected to TFCO program staff; formerly called Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care

Arrange active transportation with a fixed route, designated stops, and pick up times when children can walk to school with adult chaperones

Restrict full contact between youth football players via limits to the number of contact practices, head hits per player, delay tackling until a certain age, etc.