Additional Resources for Supporting Healthy Dating Relationships

For Preventing and Stopping Dating Violence

• Violence often gets more extreme over time. Research suggests that bullying, sexual harassment, and homophobic name calling during middle school can lead to unhealthy relationships and dating violence later in adolescence.¹ Learn more about how to prevent bullying.
• The Office of Adolescent Health's Pregnancy Assistance Fund supports services for expectant and parenting youth who experience domestic violence, sexual violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
• Two federal laws – the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 and the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act – provide support and services for communities to reduce violence and to assist victims. The annual rate of domestic violence dropped by more than half in the 15 years following the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994.²
• The Office on Violence Against Women, within the U.S. Department of Justice, offers financial aid and technical assistance to communities across the country to support programs, policies, and practices that aim to stop domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office on Women's Health offers resources on dating violence that highlight helpful strategies for teens and their families. For example, information includes how to leave an abusive relationship and how to avoid date rape drugs. 
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Dating Matters Initiative provides tips for preventing teen dating violence and maintaining healthy relationships.
• The CDC provides a description of evidence-based and promising programs that try to prevent sexual violence. 
• National Sexual Violence Resource Center has information and trainings for anyone who wants to prevent violence.

For Parents

• Learn how to talk with your teen about relationships. Focus on open communicating openly, not judging, and expressing concerns in a loving way.
• Talk to teens about online safety. 
• Promote safety in your young teen's dating life. For example, suggest that they go on a date in a group and in a public place, and that the teen tell parents where they are going and with whom. 
• Set rules and boundaries and explain why you are setting those rules.
• Get to know your adolescent's romantic partner and check in with your adolescent's relationship. 
• The CDC has a list of resources for parents, adolescents, friends, and educators of LGBT youth. 

For Schools and Communities

• Learn more about Dating Matters, a CDC program being implemented in schools around the country. There is an online training for anyone who works with youth and technical packages on preventing dating violence.
• Review a webinar on the benefits of integrating healthy relationship education in high school and college, and how to do it.
• The Center for Changing Our Campus Culture, supported by the Office on Violence Against Women, provides resources and describes current efforts to prevent sexual violence on college campuses.
• The U.S. Department of Education offers tips on how a school can help prevent dating violence on school grounds.

For Youth-serving Professionals

• Review a webinar on Promoting Healthy Teen Relationships: Preventing Teen Dating Violence.
• Examine this collection of resources for service providers and other audiences from the National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families. 
• Listen to or read reports that describe healthy marriage and relationship education programs for youth.
• Review a webinar about the importance of healthy romantic relationships in preventing teen pregnancy.

For Adolescents

• Use resources for building healthy relationships as well as help lines at Love Is Respect.
• Learn more about healthy relationships at girlshealth.gov through a Teen Survival Guide and a healthy relationships section. These resources help adolescents think about whether they have healthy relationships with people in their lives, like dating partners, family members, and friends.
• Know that federally funded Title X family planning clinics offer low-cost STD testing and contraceptive services for qualifying patients. Adolescents and others can find Title X funded clinics near their homes. 
• Use the CDC's locator service to find health centers that offer STD and HIV testing services, as well as vaccines for HPV and Hepatitis B.
• Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline for support, information, and resources.

Footnotes