The Prevention Gapidemic and Connecting the Dots

Shootings:  Twenty-eight innocent students and staff members were killed in 44 U.S.A. school shootings in the 14 months following the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Stabbings: Multiple stabbings in Canada, China and USA, including 16-year-old student in PA who stabbed 21 students and an adult — leaving four seriously injured.  

In a 2013 Student Safety Survey – 37% of students said they were aware of an individual that poses a potential risk to their school.  (scary by itself and even scarier since most school officials don’t know)
https://www.awareity.com/public/StudentSafetyReport.asp

Bullying & Suicide:  The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) validated bullying behavior and suicide-related behaviors are closely related.
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-suicide-translation-final-a.pdf

 

Evidence-based data from post-incident and post-tragedy reports reveal most, if not all, school/college tragedies were preventable.

 

Overwhelming evidence reveals a very serious Prevention Gapidemic – not preventing preventable incidents due to too many gaps.  And the troubling and dangerous gaps are prevalent in schools, colleges, organizations, government and communities.

Troubling gaps exist in nearly every school, college, organization and community today, gaps where information exists but isn’t shared or known by the right people who can do the right things. These gaps are missed opportunities to prevent tragedy. For all of us, a horrifying scenario that sadly has occurred over and over is an Active Shooter/Stabber at a school or college or in the community. Yet evidence overwhelmingly shows the organization could have prevented these expensive and tragic events. The problem is the Prevention Gapidemic.

To better understand the Prevention Gapidemic, please answer the following questions:

Is it better to have innocent children/staff come face-to-face with shooters, stabbers, stalkers, abusers, bullies and other threats and they are forced to REACT to the threats

OR

Is it better to PREVENT threats from getting to your children/staff?

 

Is it better to PREVENT Suicides or should families, friends, employees and communities REACT to Suicides and then provide ongoing REACTIVE services?

 

Every time I ask these questions, education leaders, organizational leaders and government leaders all agree that it’s better to PREVENT.

Now consider the following question:

How many of your organizations have one or more of the following Security solutions?  Special Locks, Security Doors, Security Alarms, Cameras, Access/Visitor Management System, Mass/Alert Notification Systems, Metal Detectors, Active Shooter Training, Security Assessments, Crisis Management Plan, etc.

 

Every time I ask this question, most people hold their hands up saying they have most if not all of these.

Now consider this question:

How many of you have a central, secure prevention platform that gives anyone and everyone a voice and an opportunity to share what they see, hear and know that school, college and organizational leaders may not know and then immediately the prevention platform automatically notifies the right team of people?

 

Every time I ask this question, very few if any people hold their hand up saying they have a “prevention platform” that equips everyone in their school, college, organization and community to take proactive prevention actions.

The next generation central, secure prevention platform not only allows anyone/everyone to confidentially or anonymously submit an incident report when they see or hear hurtful, harmful, suspicious and/or concerning behaviors and automatically routes the incident report to the right team members, but the next generation prevention platform also equips the right team members with the right tools to:

  • Perform threat assessments and behavior assessments
  • Securely share information from assessments with other team members
  • Set automated reminders for team members
  • Securely share updates on risks/alerts with team members
  • Escalate incidents and at-risk individuals to specialized resources (mental health, police, etc.)
  • Train all team members on the latest risks, guidelines, laws, indicators
  • Document all intervention and proactive prevention actions
  • Securely access whenever and as often as needed to updated all team members
  • Do the right things and ensure safety and proactive prevention

Are you beginning to understand the “Prevention Gapidemic”?

Everyone agrees it is better to PREVENT, yet schools, colleges and organizations are spending millions and millions of dollars on Security solutions that by design REACT to threats already at your front door, while investing little to nothing on “Proactive Prevention” solutions to prevent threats from getting to your front door.  Does this make sense?

Evidence clearly exposes current approaches do not make sense and why a Prevention Gapidemic exists.  Evidence from nearly every post-incident and post-tragedy report reveals pre-incident indicators existed and in most cases incident reports were made – BUT schools, colleges and organizations were not equipped to “collect the dots, assess the dots, connect the dots and proactively prevent” preventable incidents and tragedies.

“We/They failed to connect the dots,” is an excuse we read/hear over and over yet proven prevention solutions exist to help organizational and community leaders eliminate this unacceptable excuse.  More importantly proven prevention solutions are saving lives, reputations and budgets.

Awareity provides proven solutions to ensure Proactive Prevention, Awareness, Accountability and much more. The right information, in the hands of the right people, at the right time, can make a world of difference where we and our loved ones live, learn and work.

Awareity wants to help you make that difference and prevent tragedies. And it’s not nearly as difficult as you might think, but it requires leaders and champions to take action.

Preventing student safety incidents and tragedies ultimately isn’t about what somebody else does; prevention happens when all of us, each of us, lead by example and do the right thing.  

Do the right thing and contact Awareity to find out how easy it is to have a proven and award-winning prevention platform in place in your school, college, organization or community.

To continue on to Part Two of the Prevention Gapidemic blog series, click here.