DVAM 2026 – With Survivors, Always: Building a Future With Less Violence

Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) asks us to do more than name the harm. It’s a time to listen to survivors, recognize the impact of domestic violence, and prevent future violence by building communities where safety, connection, respect, and accountability can thrive. 

The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) and Domestic Violence Awareness Project’s (DVAP) 2026 theme, With Survivors, Always, builds on that commitment with a clear call: survivors deserve action.

That action includes support, resources, and accountability when people are harmed, and communities that are actively working to make violence less likely to happen at all. For prevention practitioners, that means identifying where and how to act before violence occurs. 

CDC’s Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Resource for Action helps ground that work in the best available evidence.  It showcases strategies for preventing intimate partner violence that include teaching safe and healthy relationship skills, disrupting the developmental pathways toward partner violence, creating protective environments, engaging influential adults and peers, strengthening economic supports for families, and strengthening services and supports. 

These strategies help move the idea of “survivors deserve action” from principle to practice. They offer opportunities to intervene earlier, strengthen what protects people and communities, and address the factors that make violence more likely to occur. 

Being With Survivors, Always means responding when harm occurs, but it also means committing to action that prevents harm from happening in the first place. Survivors deserve not only our support. Survivors deserve a world with less violence in it.