Implementation of a SANE Practitioner Evaluation Toolkit

This report looks at the evaluation of six Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) programs using the SANE Practitioner Evaluation Toolkit.

To address the under‐reporting and under‐prosecution of adult sexual assaults, communities throughout the United States have implemented multidisciplinary interventions to improve post‐assault care for victims and the criminal justice system response. One such model is the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program whereby specially trained nurses provide comprehensive psychological, medical, and forensic services for sexual assault. Previous studies have found that SANE programs can lead to significant increases in sexual assault prosecution rates, but these findings need to be interpreted with caution because SANE programs have proliferated much faster than evaluative data have been generated to guide practice. Although there are over 600 SANE programs in existence, only a handful have been rigorously evaluated.

To address this gap between science and practice, Campbell and colleagues (2009) developed a practitioner‐oriented evaluation toolkit as part of a previous NIJ-funded research study on how SANE programs affect criminal justice system case outcomes. The purpose of the SANE Practitioner Evaluation Toolkit was to teach program staff how to evaluate whether prosecution rates increased in their communities after the implementation of their SANE programs. Developing the evaluation capacity of SANE practitioners is a useful strategy for improving practice because evaluative data can help programs determine whether they are achieving intended positive impacts, and if not, such data can guide system reform efforts.