ICM framework

Shared Risk & Protective Factors

Find the conditions that shape several problems—and organize around what can change them.

What this helps you see

Risk factors are conditions that can increase danger; protective factors are conditions that help keep people safe. Different forms of harm often grow from some of the same conditions, and some of the same relationships, opportunities, and supports can reduce them. This framework helps partners act on those shared conditions without pretending every problem is the same.

The problem underneath

The same young person can move through schools, violence intervention, behavioral health, suicide prevention, and justice systems while those systems plan separately. That is how related problems stay connected for the person but disconnected for the institutions.

Illustrative local situation · ICM application

Put the framework against a decision.

Youth describe an unsafe route home, few places to gather, and difficulty reaching trusted adults. Partners also face distinct needs involving interpersonal violence and self-harm.

The decision: Name the shared condition each partner can change, such as access to a safe after-school place. Keep the specialized response to each form of harm and its referral path visible in the plan.
Who can act: Young people and families help define the problem. Schools, community groups, and public agencies identify who can fund, staff, and maintain each change.
Check what happened: Ask whether youth can use the support, whether referrals are completed, and how each relevant harm changes. A shared factor does not make different harms interchangeable.

Use the shared-factors system map

These are parts of the picture to examine, not a complete plan for a jurisdiction or organization. The right design depends on local conditions, authority, resources, and the people who must carry it out.

How the pieces connect

Shared risks show where the same conditions contribute to several forms of harm.
Protective factors direct investment toward belonging, stability, opportunity, trusted relationships, and access to support.
Agencies coordinate prevention while maintaining specialized responses for distinct problems.
Data about people, places, services, and outcomes helps partners decide where joint action is useful.

Where the work can break down

Several initiatives serve the same population without a shared plan.
Agencies use different definitions and measures for the same community problem.
Funding encourages programs to work separately instead of coordinating prevention.
Leaders name protective factors but do not assign responsibility or resources to strengthen them.

Explore the parts behind this idea.

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System Map

Shared Risk and Protective Factors System Map

Identify how public safety, schools, health, human services, parks, economic development, and community organizations can address shared risks and protective factors.

Action Card

Protective Factors Action Card

Define a protective factor, see how it appears in a community, and draft a testable commitment to strengthen it.

Episode Insight

Hope Is a Way of Thinking

Hope becomes practical when a person has a goal that matters, a route they can actually use, and the motivation to keep moving. Hope theory calls these goals, pathways, and agency.

Episode Insight

Blocked Goals Can Become Anger, Despair, and Apathy

Repeatedly blocked pathways can change how people respond—from fighting harder, to losing confidence, to no longer believing action matters.

Framework

Shift From a Deficit Lens to an Asset-Based Lens

Start by identifying strengths, relationships, and existing capacity, then use those assets to build movement toward a safer future.

Check the evidence for your place.

This framework organizes decisions. Local data and research still have to match the harm, people, and setting.

Open Research & Evidence

Build the approach for your context.

Turning this framework into a workable strategy takes local analysis, decisions about ownership and resources, and a way to test whether the response reaches people as intended.

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