# Evaluation of the Close to Home Program in California: Assessing the impact of community mobilization to prevent sexual violence at the individual, social network, and community levels

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO · 2021 · $375,000

## Abstract

PROJECT ABSTRACT
 Two approaches promoted in the current RFP and the CDC’s STOP SV Strategies guidance are 1)
Promoting Social Norms that Protect Against Violence, and 2) Creating Protective Environments. The current
proposal to evaluate Close to Home (C2H), a community mobilization SV prevention model, incorporates both
approaches within a rigorous and innovative research design. Community mobilization to prevent SV, including
the C2H model, is designed to create deep social norms change and enhance protective community
environments, yet has rarely been evaluated. We propose to rigorously evaluate the C2H model via a cluster-matched
control trial across 14 diverse communities in California via collection and analyses of social network, social media and
community-wide school-based data in order to provide much-needed evidence on the effectiveness of this community-level
approach to prevent SV. California is uniquely poised to conduct this research given a) the number of communities
implementing C2H, b) CDPH’s 10-year commitment to building capacity to support local implementation of
this model, and c) CDPH’s ongoing partnership on RPE evaluation with University of California San Diego’s
Center on Gender Equity and Health, a center with the highest levels of expertise in evaluation of sexual violence
prevention programs, social network science, and assessing norms across social networks and social media. We
propose a highly-innovative, multi-level evaluation of C2H involving the following aims: 1) Develop and
implement a cluster-matched control design in partnership with the Research Advisory Board, including
collecting baseline social network and social media data across 14 diverse California communities; 2)
Evaluate effects of the C2H model on social norms and community connectivity regarding SV, and SV
incidence via longitudinal analyses of baseline and 24-month follow-up social network data; and 3) Extend
Aim 2 findings via analyses of community-level effects on SV social norms and behavior based on multiple
waves of community-level school-based data and geocoded social media data. The proposed research will fill
a critical evidence gap in SV prevention by evaluating effects of C2H, a promising community mobilization SV
prevention model, on community-level social norms, community connectivity (a key element of protective
environments), and SV incidence in accordance with CDC’s STOP SV guidance. Proposed longitudinal social
network analyses will also provide the first evidence regarding diffusion of changes in SV social norms and
behaviors. These contributions will accelerate prevention of sexual violence by equipping local, state and national
stakeholders with the rigorous and generalizable evidence needed to inform implementation of community-level sexual
violence prevention programming.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10249937
- **Project number:** 5U01CE003201-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Jay G Silverman
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $375,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-30 → 2025-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10249937

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10249937, Evaluation of the Close to Home Program in California: Assessing the impact of community mobilization to prevent sexual violence at the individual, social network, and community levels (5U01CE003201-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10249937. Licensed CC0.

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