The Child Safety Learning Collaborative (CSLC), an initiative of the Children’s Safety Network (CSN) at Education Development Center (EDC), aims to reduce injury and violence among infants, children and adolescents nationwide. The CSLC builds Title V capacity through technical assistance in child safety, systems improvement, and leadership and management. Title V teams use data to inform decision making and apply quality improvement and innovation methods to sustainably implement and spread evidence-based strategies state-wide. The first of three cohorts ends in May 2025. Over the past 18 months, 19 state teams actively worked on infant safe sleep, bullying prevention, suicide and self-harm prevention, and motor vehicle traffic safety. Cohort 2 of the CSLC begins in June 2025 and will add teams working on drowning prevention.
In this webinar, a panel of CSLC participants representing Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, and Tennessee will share how the CSLC supports them across the phases of improvement to develop, test, implement, and spread evidence-based strategies. The webinar will highlight stories, lessons learned, tools, and resources offered by the CSLC that can be used and adapted by any injury prevention program.
Presenters:
Lauren Gilman, MA is a highly skilled technical assistance specialist and an experienced program manager at Education Development Center, with extensive knowledge of mental health promotion, behavioral health, school-based initiatives, substance misuse prevention, youth violence prevention, and mentoring. Drawing on her health communications and capacity-building expertise, she helps community organizations and school districts bridge research and practice, implement and sustain evidence-based programs, strengthen cross-sector collaboration, and use data-driven planning to achieve systems change. Lauren is a training and technical assistance specialist for Children’s Safety Network and is the content specialist for bullying prevention for the Child Safety Learning Collaborative. Her integrated approach to advancing substance misuse prevention and social emotional learning emphasizes interconnected risk and protective factors and fosters collaboration at the community level.
Clare Grace Jones, MEd is a technical assistance associate and public health and safety expert at Education Development Center (EDC), specializing in capacity building, instructional design, training, quality improvement, project support, and virtual engagement. A Certified Community Prevention Specialist, she has 17 years of experience promoting public health, with a focus on substance misuse prevention and the Strategic Prevention Framework. Clare Grace advances health, behavioral health, safety, and injury and violence prevention initiatives through her roles with the Children’s Safety Network, as the sudden unexpected infant death prevention subject matter lead, and through her work with the Strategic Prevention Technical Assistance Center and the Collaborative for Promoting Healthy Out-of-School Time. Previously, she worked for EDC’s Center for the Application of Prevention Technology. Before joining EDC, Clare Grace held positions in state and community health agencies as a state and regional training and TA provider, direct service provider, director of prevention services, state-level capacity coach, and project manager.
Maria Katradis, PhD is an education and public health researcher at Education Development Center with expertise in youth development, adult learning, international education, and quality improvement. Maria is a training and technical assistance specialist for the Children’s Safety Network and the Child Safety Learning Collaborative content specialist for suicide and self-harm prevention and poisoning prevention. She manages and analyzes data, provides training and technical assistance, and presents on topics such as quality improvement and evidence-based and evidence informed strategies for child and adolescent injury and violence prevention. She utilizes both qualitative and quantitative research methods to help states develop a clearer picture of where they are in their quality improvement process.
Jenny Stern-Carusone, MSW has over 20 years experience as a prevention professional, designing and providing technical assistance to state agencies, tribal governments, community-based organizations, schools, and juvenile justice departments to improve prevention strategies and service delivery by customizing approaches to address clientele’s unique needs. As Associate Director at the Children’s Safety Network at Education Development Center, Jenny builds the capacity of states and jurisdictions to use data and evidence-based strategies to reduce injury-related deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency room visits. She teaches quality improvement approaches to advance child safety through rapid cycle tests of change and the spread of evidence-based practices. Jenny has presented at national conferences on child and adolescent injury prevention, systems improvement, and youth mentoring and juvenile justice reform. Additional expertise includes online event design and implementation, including adult learning principles and webinar production in multiple platforms.