Primary Prevention Stream
Practical Strategies to Stop Violence Before it Starts
The Diverse Voices Conference Primary Prevention Stream invites attendees to explore bold, evidence-informed approaches that address the root causes of violence and create the conditions for healthier, safer, and more equitable communities. Curated sessions focus on primary prevention, early intervention, education, awareness, norms, and systems change that stop violence before it starts. To complete the Primary Prevention Stream, use this page to identify the featured sessions and register for the sessions listed below when selecting your concurrent sessions.
Meet Lana Wells
The Primary Prevention Stream has been designed by Professor Lana Wells, one of Canada’s leading experts in the prevention of gender-based violence. Drawing on nearly three decades of experience at the intersection of research, public policy, systems change, and community action, Lana has intentionally crafted this stream to move participants beyond awareness and toward data informed action. Featuring more than 20 leading practitioners, thought leaders and researchers from across Canada, the stream brings together diverse perspectives, real-world examples, and practical strategies that demonstrate how violence can be prevented before it occurs. Participants will leave with new knowledge, practical skills, and renewed momentum and excitement to advance primary prevention in their own communities, organizations, and systems.
Professor Lana Wells is the Brenda Strafford Chair in the Prevention of Domestic Violence, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary, and Fellow at the School of Public Policy. Over the past 16 years, she has focused extensively on advancing the primary prevention of gender-based violence as the founder and lead of Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence, a primary prevention research hub (www.preventdomesticviolence.
Participants interested in exploring foundational concepts before the conference can access additional learning opportunities through Shift to Learn. These optional, self-paced modules are intended to complement conference learning and are not required for participation. These self-paced online modules examine the foundations of primary prevention, root causes of violence, public policy, systems change, and strategies for engaging men and boys in violence prevention. Visit www.shifttolearn.com and use discount code 2026DiverseVoices50% to receive 50% off course registration.
What Is the Primary Prevention Stream?
Violence prevention requires more than awareness. It requires shifting behaviours, norms, relationships, systems, and policies. This seven-session stream brings together leading practitioners and researchers to explore how primary prevention can be embedded across the environments where people live, learn, work, play, and connect. Structured as a progression, each session builds on the next, moving from early influence and engagement to embedded practice, systems change, community-level and government action. Together, these sessions demonstrate how to design, implement, and scale primary prevention strategies that are practical, evidence-informed, and grounded in real-world contexts.
By participating in this stream, attendees will:
- Understand how primary prevention can be implemented across multiple settings and contexts
- Learn evidence-informed primary prevention strategies to shift behaviours, norms, and cultures
- Explore practical approaches to engaging men, youth, parents, workplaces, and communities
- Gain tools to design and scale primary prevention efforts within their own contexts
- Strengthen their ability to apply Indigenous-led and youth-centred approaches to prevention and systems change
Primary Prevention Stream Sessions
Whether you attend all 7 sessions or one, you will come away with new knowledge and practical tools you can apply in your own practice.
Concurrent Session: 1A
Time: 60 minutes
11:30 – 12:30 on Wednesday October 28, 2026
Lianne Lee, (ConnectED Parents), Elena Esina (Shift/ConnectED Parents), Jake Stika, (Next Gen
Men)
This session explores how digital environments are shaping beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours among young people and how technology can be leveraged as a tool for prevention. With a focus on youth, parents, and online influence, presenters will examine both the risks and opportunities of technology in shaping social norms along with evidence informed strategies to prevent violence through technology.
Participants will explore:
- How are online environments influencing norms related to gender, relationships, and
violence? - What role can parents and caregivers play in early prevention?
- How can technology be used intentionally to promote healthy, respectful behaviours?
Key takeaway: Prevention starts early, and increasingly, it starts online with youth and with engaging parents.
Concurrent Session: 2A
Time: 90 minutes
1:30 – 3:00 Wednesday October 28th
Brooklyn Leibham, Jorja Mirasty, Kaitlyn Zoobkof, Lazaya Villeneuve, Sadie Turning Robe, Kelsi Remier, Jennifer Fournier (USAY)
This session explores how Indigenous youth leadership can inform primary prevention of gender-based violence and re-envision child welfare systems through Indigenous knowledge, self-determination, and lived experience. Grounded in an Indigenous-led, participatory
approach, the project centres youth voices through storytelling, dialogue, and collective reflection, including the co-creation of a documentary film with Indigenous researchers, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, Grandmothers, and young Indigenous women.
Participants will explore:
- How can Indigenous youth leadership shape more effective and culturally grounded
prevention strategies? - What role do storytelling, lived experience, and relational approaches play in prevention
and systems change? - How can child welfare and social work systems move from reactive responses to
upstream, prevention-focused approaches rooted in Indigenous knowledge?
Key takeaway: Prevention and systems change are most effective when they are Indigenous-led, youth-centred, and grounded in culture, connection, and community
Concurrent Session: 3A
Time: 90 min
10:30 – 12:00 on Thursday October 29th
Kim Ruse, (FearIsNotLove), Jeff St. John (Forge) & Wanda McGinnis (Big Hill Haven)
Despite being central to prevention, men are often missing from traditional programming. This session highlights innovative approaches that meet men where they are including anonymous, accessible entry points such as online platforms and counselling lines, while also shifting help-seeking norms within communities.
Participants will explore:
- Why do men often not engage in prevention or support services?
- What models are effective in reaching men early and safely?
- How can communities reduce stigma and normalize help-seeking among men?
Key takeaway: Prevention requires accessible, stigma-free pathways for men to engage before
harm occurs.
Concurrent Session: 4A
Time: 90 minutes
1:00 -2:30 on Thursday October 29th
Lana Wells & Elizabeth Dozois (Shift/UCalgary)
Workplaces, particularly male-dominated ones. are powerful yet underutilized settings for primary prevention. This session will share a tested and evaluated approach implemented in law enforcement that focuses on building prosocial skills, shifting norms within teams, and leveraging peer influence to create culture change.
Participants will explore:
- Why are male-dominated workplaces critical environments for prevention?
- What are the key features of the approach?
- How can behaviour change spread through networks and influence broader culture?
Key takeaway: Everyday environments, like workplaces, are key leverage points for shifting
norms and behaviours at scale.
Concurrent Session: 4F
Time: 60 minutes
3:00 – 4:00 on Thursday October 29th
Dr. Ebony Rempel (YWCA Banff), Lana Wells (Shift), Dr. Caroline Claussen (C3Inc), Linette Soldan (Rowan House Society)
Effective primary prevention must be grounded in local realities. This session demonstrates how communities can use local data to identify patterns of perpetration, engage stakeholders who can influence social conditions, and design targeted, place-based prevention strategies. Drawing on work in Banff, Cochrane and High River, presenters will share practical tools for turning data into community action to stop violence before it starts.
Participants will explore:
- How can communities’ access and use local data to understand patterns of
perpetration? - What does it take to mobilize local leaders and systems around changing the social
conditions to prevent violence? - How can place-based approaches lead to more effective and sustainable outcomes?
Key takeaway: Prevention is most effective when it is locally driven, data-informed, and
community-led.
Concurrent Session: 5A
Time: 90 minutes
9:15 -10:45 on Friday October 30th
Corinne Ofstie, co-director, AASAS and Dr. Sarah Fotheringham
The Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services (AASAS) initiated a strategic process to identify high-level priorities for advancing the primary prevention of sexual violence across Alberta over the next five years. Working in collaboration with member agencies, AASAS sought to strengthen sector-wide prevention efforts by drawing on both community practice expertise and existing evidence-informed frameworks.
As part of this process, AASAS reviewed foundational prevention work developed through the partnership between IMPACT, Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence, and the Government of Alberta, including the Alberta Primary Prevention Framework, Alberta’s Primary Prevention Playbook, and a suite of policy and legislative recommendations focused on preventing sexual violence. These resources emphasized the need for structural, systems, and cultural approaches to prevention, while recognizing sexual violence as requiring distinct and targeted strategies.
By integrating this evidence base with the lived experience and practical knowledge of member agencies, AASAS identified a set of priorities intended to guide the sector’s prevention work over the coming years.
This document presents those priorities and is intended to serve as a practical roadmap for strengthening the primary prevention of sexual violence across Alberta.
Concurrent Session: 5F
Time: 60 minutes
11:00 -12:00 pm on Friday October 30th
Dr. Deinera Exner-Cortens, Chair: CIHR Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Childhood Health Promotion, Faculty of Arts, Department of Pyschology, Director, PREVNet
For more than two decades, PREVNet has played a foundational role in advancing the prevention of bullying, youth violence, and unhealthy relationships across Canada. By connecting researchers, educators, practitioners, and policymakers, PREVNet helped establish bullying and peer victimization as critical public health and social development issues requiring coordinated, evidence-informed responses.
Today, the prevention landscape is evolving. Young people are navigating increasingly complex social environments shaped by digital platforms, online misogyny, social isolation, mental health pressures, and changing norms around relationships, consent, and identity. These realities call for prevention approaches that begin early, evolve across development, and address the continuum of harms that can emerge from childhood peer aggression to adolescent dating violence and later interpersonal violence.
This presentation by Dr. Deinera Exner-Cortens explores the enduring impact of PREVNet, the current challenges facing children and youth, and the opportunities ahead for strengthening Canada’s prevention infrastructure. It will examine how early intervention, healthy relationship education, digital literacy, and cross-sector collaboration can help build safer schools, healthier communities, and more violence-free futures.
As Canada considers long-term strategies to improve wellbeing and prevent violence, PREVNet offers an important model of how research, policy, and practice can come together to create meaningful and lasting change.
Participants will learn:
- How PREVNet helped transform bullying prevention in Canada through research, policy, and practice collaboration.
- Emerging risks facing children and youth today, including digital harms and relationship violence.
- Why early prevention is critical to reducing later violence and promoting lifelong wellbeing.
- Practical opportunities for schools, communities, and governments to strengthen prevention systems.
- How cross-sector partnerships can create lasting impact for the next generation.
As Canada considers long-term strategies to improve wellbeing and prevent violence, PREVNet offers an important model of how research, policy, and practice can come together to create meaningful and lasting change.