We Have the Roadmap. We Just Can't Read It.

There is an emerging, robust, and genuinely hopeful evidence base on how to prevent gender-based violence, bullying, harassment and discrimination. The research tells us what works. It tells us why it works. It gives us frameworks, models, and implementation pathways that span primary prevention — stopping harm before it starts — all the way through to tertiary response — supporting people after harm has occurred.

So why are so many organisations still running annual training and calling it a prevention strategy?

The honest answer isn't lack of will. In my experience, most professionals working in People and Culture, EDI, wellbeing, risk, and management roles want to get this right. They care deeply. They're motivated. But the evidence base they're being directed toward is lengthy, dense, and largely written for academics and policy architects — not for the person who needs to implement something meaningful in the next six months with a constrained budget and a full inbox.

This is a systems failure, not an individual one. And it's one I think about constantly.

The prevention spectrum is real, and it matters

Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention aren't just categories — they're an interconnected architecture. As Our Watch — Australia's national organisation for the prevention of violence against women — describes in their Change the Story framework: tertiary prevention (responding to harm, supporting victim-survivors, holding perpetrators accountable) is necessary but cannot carry the load alone. Secondary prevention — early intervention, building protective factors, catching concerning behaviour before escalation — bridges incident and culture. And primary prevention addresses the underlying drivers of violence, including gender inequality and intersecting forms of structural inequality.

The problem? Primary prevention is regularly placed in the "too hard basket." It requires a long-term lens, whole-of-organisation commitment, and a willingness to interrogate structural power. It's uncomfortable. It's slow. It doesn't come with a certificate of completion.

So organisations default to what's familiar: training. Policy review. Awareness campaigns. All of which have value — but only when they're connected to something larger.

Behavioural science gives us a different question to ask

When I applied the COM-B model — Capability, Opportunity, Motivation = Behaviour — to prevention work alongside Dr. Paul Chadwick at the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, one finding stood out: we had been relying almost entirely on education and persuasion to change behaviour. While these are powerful tools, they don't address everything. They don't help someone develop the interpersonal skill to give constructive feedback, or the confidence to intervene when something feels off in a team meeting. They don't shift the social norm that makes speaking up feel risky.

For behaviour to change — for someone to actually intervene, disclose, challenge, or lead differently — they need capability and opportunity and motivation. All three. Not one.

This is the gap between knowing and doing. And it's the gap I've built my practice around bridging.

The workforce is willing. The system isn't set up for them.

It is not okay that prevention practitioners, HR professionals and EDI leads are being asked to implement complex, evidence-based prevention work without adequate resourcing, time, or infrastructure. That's a sector-wide problem that needs naming.

And yet — that's the reality most of us are working in. So the question I keep returning to is: given the current constraints, how do we make the most meaningful progress possible while also building something more sustainable for the future?

That's the tension this series sits in. And I don't think there are easy answers. But I do think there are better tools, better frameworks, and better connections available than most people know about.

That's what I've built Prevention+ and Speak Up, Stand With to address. Not as a replacement for the deep, long-term, structurally funded prevention work this issue demands — but as the scaffolding that helps organisations actually begin.

Next in this series: What the evidence actually says — and why the format it's delivered in is part of the problem.