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A team at Weber State University is working on new sexual violence prevention training with the help of a $50,000 grant from the Utah Department of Health, school officials announced Tuesday.
Funding was awarded to the Safe@Weber program, a division of the university's Women's Center, to develop a violence prevention curriculum aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.
Women's Center Director Stephanie McClure said LGBT individuals are at higher risk for experiencing sexual and domestic violence. But there has been relatively little research done to establish the best practices for combating LGBT violence in an academic setting.
"The end goal, really, is to prevent sexual violence within the LGBT community and against the LGBT community," McClure said.
Researchers are conducting surveys of students, chiefly from WSU, to gauge the deficits in prevention training, including concerns about consent education and bystander intervention. Those survey results will be combined with a project called Photovoice, which will collect the experiences of LGBT students through photos and videos.
That will lead to the creation of workshops that can be used throughout the state, McClure said, to educate LGBT individuals between ages 18 and 25.
"I know, as a preventionist, that it's really important to decrease somebody's risk factors of experiencing sexual violence as well as to try and provide protective factors," McClure said.
The bulk of the grant money, McClure added, was used to hire five student researchers who identify on the LGBT spectrum.
In a prepared statement, WSU violence prevention intern Porter Lunceford said LGBT-specific resources are needed, because the experiences of the community are unique and lead to LGBT individuals feeling excluded or neglected by traditional sexual violence prevention efforts.
"We're working to make that difference and address these issues that so few have attempted to address," Lunceford said, "despite an obvious need for intervention."
The grant from the Utah Department of Health has a one-year term, McClure said, and the workshop curriculum is expected to be finished in roughly six months.
"The whole grant project should be completed by June 30 of this year," she said.
Students interested in participating in the Photovoice project are invited to meet Jan. 11 between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. in Room 321 of Weber State University's Shepherd Union building.
Twitter: @bjaminwood