Vital Strategies

About the organization

Vital Strategies is a global health organization present in more than 80 countries. With an office in Brazil since 2017, it works in partnership with governments and civil society to influence policies, practices, and people in addressing complex health challenges in the country and around the world. Its mission is to ensure that all people have the opportunity to live long and healthy lives. To achieve this, it combines data intelligence, strategic communication, and implementation capacity to transform evidence into solutions capable of generating lasting, sustainable, and high-impact results. The Violence Prevention Program exemplifies this approach by improving data quality, supporting public policies, and developing tools for early identification and response to violence against children and women.

Socioeconomic Context

Violence against women, adolescents, and children in Brazil is marked by deep inequalities of gender, race, and income, as well as intergenerational cycles of violence that often remain invisible to public systems. According to the 18th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (2024), the majority of sexual violence victims in the country are girls up to 13 years old (61.6%), usually assaulted within the domestic environment and by known individuals. At the same time, women victims of violence face greater risk of case escalation when they cannot access protection and care networks (or access fragmented networks) early on. Despite the severity of the situation, health, social assistance, public security, and justice systems still operate in a fragmented manner, with databases that barely communicate with each other, hindering integrated diagnoses and coordinated responses. In this context, new data analysis technologies, including the ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence, emerge as promising tools to identify invisible patterns, anticipate risks, and support evidence-based public policies.

Strengthening the government’s capacity to connect data, identify early warning signs, and transform information into prevention is now an essential step to interrupt cycles of violence before they become lethal.

Project Objective

Support for the Violence Prevention Program, developed by Vital Strategies Brazil, aims to strengthen the Health sector’s response to violence against children, adolescents, and women. The program’s pillars include the production and improvement of evidence, strategic use of data, technical support to partner governments, and coordination with the Ministry of Health to enhance public policies for prevention, early identification, and response to violence. The project combines analysis of public databases, development of data visualization and use tools, strategic communication, and support for defining and implementing priority actions in municipalities such as São Paulo, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro, with the potential to generate impact at the national level as well.

In 2024, it supported the program in a project that helped Brazil become the first country to adapt the INSPIRE Indicators at the local level, a set of metrics developed by international organizations, including UNICEF and WHO, to guide the monitoring of strategies for preventing and eliminating violence against children and adolescents.

Also in 2024, Infinis invested in strengthening the Program’s resource mobilization capacities, aiming to expand its financial sustainability. The initiative received technical support from Mobiliza, which conducted an institutional assessment, mapped potential donors, developed a strategic resource mobilization plan, and provided mentoring to support the implementation of fundraising actions.

Partners

Dialogue with public policies

Through technical support to partner governments, meetings and workshops with departments and the Ministry of Health, use of Technical Cooperation Agreements for access and improvement of public data, and joint development of priorities and action plans to enhance public health policies and services. There is also provision for support in implementing improvements to public policies and actions related to violence surveillance, including with the Ministry of Health and local governments.