National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

Division of Violence Prevention

CS223257A

Dating MattersTM: Strategies to Promote 

Healthy Teen Relationships

Teen dating violence is a preventable public health problem. It requires a 

coordinated and comprehensive community response to stop it before it starts. 

• One in 10 high school students has experienced physical violence from a dating 

partner in the past year.

• One in 4 adolescents reports verbal, emotional, physical or sexual dating 

violence each year.

• Across studies, 15-40% of youth report perpetrating some form of violence 

towards a dating partner.

• Risk factors for teen dating violence include individual, peer, partner, parent, 

and neighborhood influences.

• Perpetrating dating violence in adolescence increases the risk of perpetrating 

violence toward a partner in adulthood.

• Exposure to dating violence significantly affects a range of mental and physical 

health problems. 

To address these issues, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed 

Dating MattersTM: Strategies to Promote Healthy Teen Relationships, which aims to:

• Develop, implement, and 

evaluate a comprehensive 

approach to promote 

respectful, nonviolent dating 

relationships and decrease 

emotional, physical, and 

sexual dating violence among 

youth in high-risk urban 

communities

• Build local public health 

capacity to implement 

evidence-based and 

evidence-informed violence 

prevention strategies across the social ecology

• Identify and validate community level indicators of teen dating violence

Dating MattersTM: Strategies to Promote Healthy Teen Relationships employs a 

comprehensive approach to violence prevention at each level of the social ecology.

Three significant gaps exist in teen dating violence prevention:

• Little is known about what works to prevent dating violence among youth in 

urban communities with high crime and economic disadvantage. 

• Local public health agencies often are not the primary agents for dating 

violence prevention programming in communities. 

• A lack of local data on teen dating violence limits communities’ ability to 

monitor and track the problem.
The first phase of Dating Matters (2011-2015) is a five-year demonstration phase during which CDC examines the cost, feasibility, 

sustainability, and effectiveness of a comprehensive approach to teen dating violence in up to four high-risk urban communities.

After the demonstration phase, it is anticipated that the following products developed for Dating MattersTM will be publicly 

available and free of charge:

• CDC-Developed Teen Dating Violence Prevention Curricula Package*

• Teen Dating Violence Prevention Youth and Parent Curricula Adaptation 

Package

• Teen Dating Violence Prevention Communications Package

• Teen Dating Violence Prevention Policy Package

• Online Organizational Capacity and Readiness Assessment

• Teen Dating Violence Community-Level Indicators Package

• Teen Dating Violence Outcome Evaluation Package

 *if effective in evaluation

Dating MattersTM Educator Training—Dating MattersTM: Understanding Teen Dating 

Violence Prevention—was developed in partnership with Liz Claiborne Inc. and is available at www.vetoviolence.org

It’s Everyone’s Responsibility to Stop Dating Violence

Teen dating violence is a preventable public health problem. It requires a coordinated and comprehensive community response 

to stop it before it starts.