About This E-Publication

Implementing SANE Programs in Rural Communities: The West Virginia Regional Mobile SANE Project describes the project’s development and discusses the essential steps needed to replicate it in other rural communities.

From 2002 to 2005, the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) provided funding for the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information and Services (FRIS) to develop and implement a mobile sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) program in a rural area of West Virginia that could be replicated throughout the Nation. The project demonstrates the flexibility needed when communities are first planning to launch a project. For example, FRIS staff originally planned to use a self-contained mobile unit for forensic examinations. After considering the challenges involved, however, they opted instead to recruit a pool of on-call SANEs who would serve several hospitals in a four-county region. This strategy improved the quality of medical care and forensic examination of sexual assault victims by increasing the number of SANEs available to fill schedules and the opportunities available for them to further build their skills and experience, while decreasing the likelihood of SANE burnout and the cost for the hospitals involved. Although the OVC grant ended in September 2005, the SANE program continues today.

This replication guide has been developed in both a print and online format to provide technical assistance for rural communities interested in developing a similar program. The guide documents the processes involved in planning, developing, implementing, and sustaining the West Virginia project; discusses the “lessons learned”; and provides a replication checklist and information on available resources for those who serve victims of sexual assault.

Much of the information presented here was drawn from FRIS’s “Mobile SANE Project Final Report,” accessed on the FRIS Web site (www.fris.org).

NCJ 221753