Author Identifier (ORCID)
Abstract
Executive Summary:
Violence against women remains one of Western Australia's most serious and persistent social problems, and young adults aged 18–24 represent a pivotal demographic for primary prevention — the work of stopping violence before it starts. The Co-Designing Impact project, funded by the Department of Communities' Family and Domestic Violence Primary Prevention Grants Program 2024/2026 and delivered in partnership between Yourtoolkit.com and Edith Cowan University (ECU), engaged university students aged 18–24 in a six-session co-design program. Participants learned about the drivers of violence against women and the principles of primary prevention, then co-designed social media messaging intended to shift the attitudes, behaviours and social conditions that drive violence against women among their peers. This report presents the project approach, the literature informing it, and the research findings across the program's first three deliveries — a two-workshop pilot (June 2025), a full six-session mixed-gender cohort (August 2025), and a second full six-session cohort (April 2026) — together with a dedicated section answering the project's research questions and evidence-informed recommendations for government, prevention practitioners, and higher education.
Keywords
violence against women, family and domestic violence, gender-based violence, primary prevention, violence prevention, young adults, university students, higher education
Document Type
Report
Date of Publication
2026
Type of File
Publisher
Edith Cowan University / Department of Communities, Western Australia Government
School
School of Medical and Health Sciences / School of Education / Nutrition & Health Innovation Research Institute
RAS ID
100722
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Content Type
Full object
First Page
1
Last Page
47
Recommended Citation
Lemon, N., Holmes, L., Gray, C., & Goopy, J. (2026). Co-designing impact: Student-led prevention messaging for the primary prevention of violence against women. Research report prepared for the Department of Communities, Government of Western Australia. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/vke2-fd35/a>