Preventing Harm
Reducing preventable deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes, overdose and gender-based violence
We apply science and policy solutions to these complex challenges, working alongside governments and community partners to reduce risk and build health-centered responses that save lives and promote equity.
Preventable causes of death and injury
Every year, millions of people are killed or injured by harms that could have been prevented—from road crashes and overdose to gender-based violence. Road crashes are the leading killer of young people aged 5–29. One in three women will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.
These harms are not inevitable. With the right data, public health strategies and policy, progress is possible, and it can reach everyone.
What preventing harm looks like in practice
We support partners to:
- Improve road safety through data-driven policy and behavior change at scale
- Advance equitable, health-centered approaches to overdose prevention
- Strengthen gender-based violence prevention and response through better data
- Build evidence and capacity so governments and communities can act
Together, these efforts help prevent deaths, reduce injury and keep communities safer.
Road Safety
Vital Strategies is an implementing partner of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety, a consortium carrying out proven interventions in 14 countries and up to 30 cities worldwide. By combining crash surveillance, policy development, infrastructure improvements and public awareness campaigns, this work has helped create safer roads and change traffic behavior at scale. For example, in Fortaleza, Brazil, Vital-supported media campaigns on drink-driving and speeding helped drive down road deaths so consistently that the city became a model for the entire initiative—proof that a public awareness campaigns can translate eyeballs on screens to changing what happens on a street corner.
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Nearly 1 million
Vital Strategies is an implementing partner of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety, which has saved nearly 1 million lives across dozens of cities around the world.
Overdose Prevention
Vital’s Overdose Prevention Program partners in the United States with state governments, communities and people with lived experience to equitably and sustainably reduce overdose deaths. Using a health-centered, evidence-based approach, the program advances interventions that support rather than criminalize people who use drugs, with a focus on communities most affected by the crisis. Vital Strategies’ “You Have the Power to Save Lives” campaign, promoting naloxone use in Black communities, generated 12 million impressions, doubled naloxone distribution during the campaign period, and left people who saw it five times more likely to carry it. Key to the impact was partnering with trusted messengers with lived experience and ambassadors, making cultural and emotional connections that moved people to carry a lifesaving medication.
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34%+
decline in overdose deaths in Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin in 2024—states where Vital Strategies promotes a public health approach to overdose, against a 27% national decline.
Preventing harm saves lives
Preventing harm means acting before injury, violence or overdose strikes—and being ready when it does. We help partners build the evidence, policy and systems to do both.
Explore other areas of impact
Protecting Communities
We support efforts that reduce exposure to air pollution, extreme heat and toxic hazards and help create safer, healthier environments in the places people live, work, learn and play.
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Promoting Health
We support efforts to reduce tobacco use, harmful alcohol consumption and unhealthy diets, easing the burden of noncommunicable diseases on people, health systems and economies.
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