National Center for Healthy Safe Children | American Institutes for Research (2024)

Collaborating across systems to improve the well-being of youth, families, and communities

AIR’s National Center for Healthy Safe Children champions the well-being of young people by nurturing safe, healthy learning environments. Our seasoned team of diverse experts delivers cutting-edge strategies—training and technical assistance, program evaluation, resource development, and customized support—in mental health and violence prevention, providing tailor-made support and expertise to elevate the health and safety of communities nationwide. To learn more about our team, visit the Experts section.

Our mission is to empower educational and community leaders with the skills to forge resilient, inclusive support systems. We promote mental health and wellness strategies, advocate for equitable services, and encourage seamless collaboration across different support systems (e.g., educational, behavioral healthcare, and social frameworks), ensuring every child and young adult stands on a foundation of strength and support.

Check out our featured resources below and visit What We Do to access more resources to help you develop sustainable mental health programs and models so all young people thrive.

Our Work

AIR brings decades of experience in promoting mental health and reducing youth violence in schools, communities, and states across the nation. We use a cross-systems approach through training and technical assistance, coaching, research, and evaluation supports. This approach is based on data and needs and then customized to the unique contexts. Explore examples of our work below.

Safe, supportive, and healthy environments:

• National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments provides a range of resources on mental health, physical safety, bullying, cyberbullying, human trafficking, substance use prevention, crisis response, and building trauma-sensitive schools.
• Center of Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS Center) supports states, districts, and schools across the country in implementing an MTSS framework that integrates data and instruction within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and support students’ social, emotional, and behavior needs.
• Nevada School Climate/ Social Emotional Learning Survey offers the Nevada Department of Education supports in their school climate efforts by providing survey results to schools and district through developing reports and tools.

Violence prevention using a public health approach:

• Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs and Interagency Collaboration coordinates federal activities to support positive outcomes for youth by sharing information, deepening collaboration, and understanding across departments, agencies, and offices, and developing and advancing the strategic plan for youth.
• Violence Prevention Technical Assistance Center supports factors that cut across multiple forms of violence (teen dating violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence) to achieve community-level impact.
• Moving from Theory to Action (T2A): Supporting the Conditions for Equity and Thriving Children supports an environmental scan of innovative social determinants of health (SDOH) strategies and exemplar communities implementing SDOH frameworks and offers trainings on SDOH frameworks to promote child well-being.

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