PFI-RP: Commercializing a novel mobile platform technology to both prevent and respond to high school violence

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project addresses a significant societal and public health problem: school violence. Annually, there are over 4.3 million school violence offenses resulting in $400 million in direct costs and $94 million in health care costs from student injuries.

When unaddressed, school violence, including bullying, hazing, sexual harassment, and dating violence, impacts victims’ health and safety. The societal value of our proposed innovation is a comprehensive and easy-to-adopt system that reduces present and future risk to students, reassures parents that schools are working to protect students, and reduces schools’ risk and liability.

The innovative system will be a licensable. dynamic, real-time, interactive, customizable tool deployed via mobile app technology. It will provide new, evidence-based and age-specific educational content and prevention strategies for high school students, delivered in a format that facilitates end-user adoption and engagement. The target market segment for the proposed innovation is the 35,000 US public and private high schools. The initial customers are school administrators, followed by community organizations and parents.

The proposed project addresses the need for an integrated, comprehensive system to reduce school violence and teach high school students to respond safely to the spectrum of school violence including bullying, harassment and assault. The mobile app and accompanying administrator dashboard represent the novel union of technology, prevention science, and adolescent development science.

This project will evaluate the impact of the student safety app on school violence incidents, student knowledge of school violence and prevention, student reports of violence, and access to support resources. Additionally, app implementation strategies will be researched and evaluated to optimize student usage. The team will conduct a four-state, 20-school pilot study that includes qualitative focus group data collection with students and school administrators and quantitative survey administration before, during, and following the implementation of the student safety app.

The anticipated output is a mobile app-deployed school safety system that integrates comprehensive education, prevention, communication, and response tools. The team's effort represents an innovative combination of gamified research-informed social-emotional educational content, a confidential reporting tool, interactive tools to aid students in risky situations, push notifications to student phones, and streamlined access to school and community resources.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.