Schools play a critical role in preventing and responding to sexual harassment and sexual assault among young people. The 2025 Healthy Youth Survey found that at least 1 in 13 8th-grade students in Washington have experienced some form of sexual violence. 

Youth-centered Environment Shift (YES!) is a free, flexible toolkit from Washington's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) that helps schools address and prevent sexual violence, harassment, and bullying among students. YES! works to shift school culture, policies, and physical spaces so the whole school environment protects students from violence. Schools apply strategies that:

• create protective environments
• build positive social norms and youth-adult partnerships, and 
• center students’ needs and experiences 

This webinar will provide an orientation to the YES! Program and innovative tools like hot spot mapping—which leverages real student data about where they feel safe and unsafe at school to make changes to the school environment. Attendees will learn school- and community-level primary prevention approaches to protect students against all forms of violence. Attendees will also take steps to build themselves as champions of change in their school communities. 

Learning outcomes:

• Understand the burden and health consequences of sexual violence among students in Washington State.  

• Describe the need for school-based prevention efforts to reduce all forms of violence among students, specifically sexual violence.

• Identify evidence-informed best practices for implementing sexual violence prevention in schools; learn about the YES! Program approach and new tools like hot spot mapping.