This series of seven INSPIRE Policy Briefs follows the INSPIRE Evidence Update launched in 2025.
The newly released INSPIRE Evidence Update, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, marks a decade of progress and renewed purpose. The review sythesises evidence from more than 200 systematic reviews and 3,000 primary studies, making it the most comprehensive analysis ever conducted on what works to prevent, reduce, and respond to violence against children. It evaluated not just how much evidence exists, but also its quality and consistency of effectiveness across settings, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Findings show that every INSPIRE strategy now includes at least one intervention with strong and consistent evidence of effectiveness. The breakthrough areas of parenting programmes, wholeschool approaches to safe and enabling school environments, and cognitive behavioural therapy for children exposed to violence show measurable reductions in child maltreatment, youth violence, and trauma, respectively. Other effective approaches such as cash-plus programmes, healthy romantic relationships education, school-based bullying prevention programmes, community mobilisation, and life-skills training, show powerful results across diverse settings and often work in part by shifting harmful social norms that increase children’s vulnerability to violence. Together, these findings reaffirm INSPIRE’s core premise that prevention is possible and investing in proven solutions transforms lives across generations.
This series of policy briefs offer plain language summaries of the updated evidence for the INSPIRE strategies.
