Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Telehealth (SAFE-T) Center Campus Community Collaborative

The purpose of this award is to establish or expand Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) programs that will offer medical forensic care, advocacy, and other victim services to sexual assault survivors on college campuses. The primary goals of this program are to: 1) establish or expand SANE programs that will improve the delivery of sexual assault medical forensic care, advocacy, and other victim services to sexual assault survivors on campuses using coordinated community response strategies and 2) build the campuses' capacity to train and retain SANEs.

The Pennsylvania State University's Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Telehealth (SAFE-T) Center will create the SAFE-T Center Campus Community Collaborative to develop new programming aimed at expanding student awareness of, and access to, sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) services and improved coordination of campus and community services available to victims of campus sexual assault (SA). Since 2018, the SAFE-T Center has partnered with seven (6 rural, 1 suburban) hospitals in Pennsylvania to decrease disparities in the quality of forensic SA care by creating a comprehensive local forensic nursing response and providing expert, live, interactive mentoring, quality assurance, and evidence-based training via telehealth technology. All SAFE-T partner hospitals serve campus populations. The SAFE-T Campus Community Collaborative will continue to support access to quality SANE exams to current partner campus communities. This will be done through three key pathways: 1) local campus community partner building; 2) increased knowledge of, and access to, SANE career options for new nurses; and 3) use of quality improvement strategies to target improving SA service provision at two Penn State campuses. CA/NCF