THE 5 E's

When looking at this page on the site, you’re probably asking yourself, “What the heck are the 5 E’s?” That’s what I’d be asking if I was looking at someone elses website before taking this class. The 5 E’s stand for Engineering, Enforcement, Education, Economic Incentives, and Emergency Response. So what exactly does this mean?

Engineering are things that refer to changing the design, or the use of technology to make things safer. This is considered the most successful injury prevention approach for safety issues. Enforcement requires behavioral changes on an individual through the passage and enforcement of new safety-related laws. This requires political and public support to be successful. Also with it, you need some sort of legislative follow up to ensure that the safety issue it was enforced for is being regulated. Next we have education. Education persuades people in hopes to alter their behaviors for increased self-protection. This is the most widely used approach on safety matters and it also takes time for this intervention to have an effect. Economic incentives may be granted by the government or by private industries. Examples of these are sprinkler trade-offs in building code, or things like a free smoke detector program. Lastly, we have emergency response. With this, interventions are the use of Fire, EMS, or Law Enforcement resources. This part of the “E” represents the failure to effectively manage the hazard or behavior using one of the other four methods. Now how does this relate to Teen Bullying Prevention? Let me give you simple examples of how!

More to take...

There are many different factors that will have impacts on prevention efforts of teen bullying. The main ones that I personally think will have a factor on prevention effort are social factors, economic factors, and political factors. Social factors could have an impact because there may be many people who don’t see the issue with teen bullying to trying new prevention efforts for this would go against the norms of society. At the same time, there could be many people who feel that there is an issue regarding teen bullying and prevention and think educating people on the subject could have a positive outcome in the long run. Economic factors could have a play because if the economy isn’t doing so great, where would the funding come from to enroll a program to prevent teen bullying? If there’s a lack of resources then there could be a lack of effort to educate people on it as well. And then the political factor; decisions made by those higher up could have a positive or negative effect. Positive efforts could be made by pushing for teen bullying prevention campaigns. In my mind, there is also a negative side to this. Say you have someone of great prestige who has a teen who is a bully. Say that this person is also a large monetary contributor to the school. It gets out that the persons son or daughter is a bully and has been victimizing students left and right, what would the school do? What would that parent do? It’s sad to think of it that way, but people who have power could use that power for good or bad.

What this looks like with prevention

Engineering: This could be a focus for things like gun locks. How do gun locks relate to teen bullying and prevention? You hear in the news, so much more often now than it used to be, about those kids who shoot up a school. A number of these kids who are the gunman in these situations have tended to be a victim of bullying, getting their revenge on their bully’s or those who they felt have done them wrong. Better gun control locks that can be provided to consumers can help prevent teens from gaining access to them.

Enforcement: Enforcement when it comes to teen bullying would rely heavily on the school system. Schools could have a zero tolerance policy on bullying and then act upon the consequences that have been laid out in the beginning of the school year, regardless of who the child may be (e.g. someone in a higher power son or daughter, a prestigious athlete at the school, etc.).

Education: This would rely heavily on school systems as well. I think that the more students are properly educated on teen bullying, why people may do it, how it affects those they victimize, where victims could seek comfort and help, and most importantly, ways to prevent teen bullying, the better off that community will be when it comes to bullying.

Economic Incentives: This could relate because the government could give funding to those school districts to provide proper training on teen bullying prevention, and provide funds to hold workshops as well to better educate people.

Emergency Response: For this, the only thing that I could think of that could get this part of the 5 E’s involved is for Fire and EMS personnel to come in to have talks with students on their experience to responding to bullying, let students see it from their eyes.