Current Environment:

Understanding the potential for Multidisciplinary Threat Assessment and Management Teams to prevent terrorism: Conducting a formative evaluation of the Massachusetts Bay Threat Assessment Team

This initiative, funded by the Department of Justice, is a two-pronged project to increase available knowledge of Multidisciplinary Threat Assessment and Management Teams (MTAMTs). The first prong will focus on identifying and analyzing operations and essential functions of MTAMTs around the United States by conducting an environmental scan and qualitative interviews with key informants who have previous or current MTAMT experience. Analysis of the information collected will lead to the development of an overarching logic model that includes resources, activities, and outputs for community-based MTAMTs. This overarching logic model will then inform the second prong of this project, which focuses on developing an implementation guide, detailed logic model, and approach to fidelity monitoring for a Massachusetts-based threat assessment team. A formative evaluation of this Massachusetts-based team will be conducted towards the conclusion of the study, along with an assessment of its evaluability for a future outcomes evaluation.

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Understanding and targeting risk and protective factors for radicalization to violence: Advancing a public health approach to domestic terrorism prevention

This NIJ-funded study, also known as the Strong Communities Study, is a three part study to further the evidence base for a public health approach to preventing radicalization to violence. Through a national Strong Communities Survey, we will collect empirical data on risk and protective factors for violent extremism across different ideologies. Data from this survey will then be used to identify promising practices that target the most critical risk and protective factors. Community members and stakeholders from three communities from around the U.S. will then participate in sessions to help identify barriers and facilitators to implementing a public health approach to prevention radicalization to violence.

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