The State is issuing this solicitation for the purposes of funding one college campus to implement an environmental change strategy to prevent campus sexual assault in Maryland. According to the CDC, the Rape Prevention and Education (RPE) program works to prevent sexual violence by providing funding to state and territorial health departments in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and state, territorial, and tribal sexual assault coalitions. RPE recipients work collaboratively with multi-sector partners, including educational institutions, rape crisis centers, community organizations, and other state agencies to guide the implementation and evaluation of their state sexual violence (SV) prevention efforts. SV is a pervasive, complex public health problem that affects people in Maryland across their lifespan. According to the 2016-2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), 54.4% of Maryland women and 29.4% of Maryland men have experienced contact SV in their lifetime. SV can lead to adverse short and long-term mental and physical health outcomes, contributing to a substantial public health burden. The Socio-ecological Model (SEM) specifies multiple levels at which risk and protective factors as well as prevention approaches can occur. On college campuses, community-level strategies target risk and protective factors, particularly the social, economic, and environmental characteristics of organizational settings such as college campuses. The SEM provides a framework for understanding the way risk and protective factors at one level interact with those at another level. Community-level activities can be combined with individual and relationship level activities, which can strengthen the strategy overall. Under the statutory authority of the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022, Section 393A of the Public Health Service Act [42 U.S.C. 280b-1b] and (d)(4)), MD’s RPE program aims to: (1) build RPE program and partner capacity to facilitate and monitor the implementation of SV prevention programs, practices, and policies; (2) support local and state-level implementation of community- and societal-level programs, practices, and policies to prevent SV; (3) support the implementation of datadriven, comprehensive, evidence-based SV primary prevention strategies; and (4) conduct data to action activities to inform changes or adaptations to SV strategies. MDH uses RPE funds to contribute to the reduction of SV victimization rates and risk factors while increasing SV protective factors. By selecting strategies rooted in the best available evidence from the CDC’s STOP SV Resource for Action and coll
