Keynote Presentation - Reducing sexual violence: From pilot research to international scale-up in 15 years

Dr. Charlene Y. Senn is a Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Sexual Violence at the University of Windsor. She is an expert on effective sexual violence interventions, particularly those developing women’s capacity to resist sexual assault. She created the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act sexual assault resistance education program for women in the first year of university. Findings from the randomized controlled trial evaluation were published in 2015 in the New England Journal of Medicine. This 12-hr program resulted in a 46% reduction in completed rapes and 63% reduction in attempted rape experienced across one year, when compared with the control group. The program accomplishes this while reducing woman-blaming and self-blame. With her co-investigators, Charlene is currently conducting a study of implementation and effectiveness of the program as it is offered at Canadian universities. In 2016, she created a non-profit (SARE Centre) to facilitate scale-up on campuses around the world. In this presentation, Charlene will explore her journey from small internally funded pilot studies, to increasingly more complex CIHR-funded studies, to “real world” implementation