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Dr. Ann L. Coker was recently awarded a research grant to evaluate the longer-term impact of her project, “Green Dot Across the Bluegrass”, an active bystanding-based randomized intervention trial in 26 high school across Kentucky. The “Green Dot Project”, in its last year of funding by the Centers for Disease Control, was designed to reduce sexual and dating violence in high school students across Kentucky. The Green Dot project is further explained by viewing the short video at: http://vimeo.com/23589940.

The new project is funded for five years by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. As co-principal investigator, a role she shares with Dr. Diane Follingstad of the Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Coker and her colleagues will evaluate the question, “Does Green Dot continue to have an effect on reducing violence among students with Green Dot relative training compared with those without this training? This project will also explore differences in violence rates among high school seniors as become you adults? This project is unique because students will be followed independent of whether they do or do not attend college. This prospective cohort builds upon a large population-based and promising primary prevention intervention, Green Dot, designed to reduce partner and sexual violence among high school students and provides an important test of the longer-term efficacy of this program into young adulthood.

Individually following this cohort of seniors represents a significant value-added and time-sensitive opportunity because the full implementation of Green Dot began in late 2011. “Only now (2013-14) among rising seniors would we anticipate seeing an effect of Green Dot on changing bystanding and potentially reducing violence.”