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Community Violence Prevention

This project was supported by PCCD Subgrant #31894 awarded by the PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD). The opinions, findings and conclusions expressed within this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of PCCD.

From 2020 to 2022 the Community Health Council was the recipient of a Community Violence Prevention grant from PCCD. Below you can review the components of that grant.

Program Goal: Mitigate the harmful impacts of early trauma and adversity in Lebanon County.

A 3-prong approach to preventing and responding to trauma in Lebanon County.

Mobile Trauma Therapy

EMDR Certification

Connected Together
TEAMS in four pilot communities

Mobile Trauma Therapy

  • Free and confidential: specialized trauma therapy services will be available to the community at no cost
  • Mobile: Trauma therapy that comes to you. Therapists will meet with clients in safe community locations. This will increase access to care for those who are unable to come to an office or other places of service. Some example locations: School, Library, Community Park
  • Specialized targeted therapy services: Trauma trained clinicians will provide trauma assessments, evidence-based therapy, link clients to other community resources

EMDR Certification

We are now accepting scholarship applications for training and certification in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy. The application is open to licensed mental health service providers based in Lebanon county. 

Successful applicants will receive a full tuition scholarship covering the cost of the training, consultation hours, and attaining of certification credentials in accordance with the industry standards established by EMDR International Association (EMDRIA).

The application for EMDR training is now closed.


Connected Together Teams

  • Goal: Train and mobilize 8-12 Community Leaders in four key communities identified as at-risk for violence and childhood trauma in Lebanon County, based on ALICE data.
  • Goal: Implement the Communities That Care framework to establish community-based violence prevention strategies, utilizing existing data sources to plan programming.  
  • Goal: Teams will implement and evaluate at least one round of a community-identified violence prevention strategy by the end of the grant period.

Lebanon County has been designated as by the Communities that Care process.

Communities That Care (CTC) is an “operating system” that takes communities through a well-defined and structured process to prevent adolescent problem behaviors and promote positive youth development. CTC communities form a broad-based coalition and then collect local data on risk and protective factors shown by research to be associated with delinquency, violence, substance use, and school failure and dropout. After collecting this data the communities identifies 3-5 specific risk and protective factors to focus on, and then seeks evidence-based programs and strategies to address those priorities. After 2-3 years of implementing these strategies, the community re-assesses their risk and protective factors to measure impact and identify new emerging priorities.

The PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) has supported CTC for over a decade, have trained over 100 communities in the model. There are currently more than 60 active CTC coalitions across the Commonwealth. Research studies both in Pennsylvania and nationally have demonstrated CTC is effectively creating population-level public health improvement, reducing delinquency and youth drug use, and improving academic achievement for youth in these communities.