The friction
Knowledge is produced in pieces.
Data access, research incentives, command timelines, and publication systems rarely align. Promising local work can disappear when people rotate.
An independent military prevention research collaborative.
Mission: Prevent & Protect MP2
Building the evidence to prevent harm and protect those who serve.
MP2 is being formed to connect the people who understand the problem, sponsor rigorous inquiry, preserve what the field learns, and help military leaders turn evidence into responsible action.
Formation-stage concept · Founding in public-interest mode
A durable loop: measure what matters, generate insight, act responsibly, and assess what changed.
Suicide prevention
Interpersonal harm
Organizational risk
Protective climates
Implementation science
01 The case
An infrastructure gap worth testing.
Military prevention has committed leaders, experienced practitioners, active government programs, and a growing research base. Yet useful evidence can remain fragmented across institutions, difficult to access, and slow to reach the formations expected to act on it.
Our founding hypothesis: the field would benefit from a sufficiently independent, public-facing research commons dedicated to organizational prevention across the active, Reserve, and Guard components.
That is a proposition to validate with practitioners, researchers, people with lived experience, and military leaders—not a claim that the market is empty.
The public good
Make the field cumulative.
Shared measures, governed pathways, transparent methods, replication, and accessible translation can let each serious effort build on the last.
The standard
Earn trust through restraint.
Prevention research should protect privacy, distinguish association from causation, surface null findings, and never turn risk models into individual surveillance.
02 What MP2 will do
Four functions. One shared mission.
MP2 adapts the public-good architecture of a research consortium for the military prevention field.
01
Connect
Build durable relationships among military leaders, prevention professionals, researchers, clinicians, data stewards, and people with lived experience.
02
Sponsor
Fund high-value pilots, replications, implementation studies, and independent evaluations—including careful work that may not produce a headline.
03
Host
Preserve an evidence map, working papers, common measures, reproducible code, and appropriately governed research products so learning survives turnover.
04
Equip
Translate credible findings into decision briefs, convenings, training, and practical tools that help leaders diagnose conditions and choose responsible action.
Model inspiration, not affiliation. The concept draws on research-network models such as the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC): connect a field, enable rigorous work, preserve shared knowledge, and translate it for practitioners. MP2 is not affiliated with or endorsed by ESOC.
03 Field lineage
Born from the distance between a warning and a decision.
The concept grew from prevention work inside the 4th Infantry Division, where a small research team brought together serious-incident reporting, leader sensing, behavioral-health expertise, and unit context.
The lesson was not that an algorithm can prevent harm. It was that a signal has value only when people can diagnose it, respond with care, and learn whether the response helped.
- 1MeasureUse the minimum necessary data to see patterns.
- 2UnderstandCombine analysis with human and organizational context.
- 3ActMatch support to a formation's actual needs.
- 4LearnAssess outcomes, limitations, and unintended effects.
04 Research principles
Protection begins with how the work is done.
MP2's credibility must rest on sound research, explicit limits, and governance worthy of the people whose experiences may inform the evidence.
Prevention, not prediction
Prioritize modifiable organizational conditions and protective factors over claims that any model can foretell an individual's behavior.
Formation support, not surveillance
Use unit-level or deidentified information by default. Never design individual risk scores for discipline, promotion, or automated decisions.
Minimum necessary data
Separate the research commons from identifiable operational data and require lawful access, ethics review, security controls, and accountable stewardship.
Transparent evidence
Publish methods, uncertainty, null results, model drift, adverse effects, and credible alternatives—not just favorable estimates.
Independent inquiry
Protect investigator independence and publication rights from sponsor, donor, vendor, and command pressure.
Leadership with lived experience
Give prevention practitioners and people directly affected by harmful behavior a formal voice in priorities, safeguards, and interpretation.
05 Formation brief
Build the institution as carefully as the evidence.
The first job is not scale. It is earning the right to exist: validate the gap, establish independent governance, choose a responsible home, and prove one useful research-to-action cycle.
Proposed first-year work
- 01 Validate the hypothesis through structured field interviews and a landscape map.
- 02 Establish scientific, practitioner, ethics, and lived-experience advisory bodies.
- 03 Publish a military prevention evidence map and common reporting standards.
- 04 Sponsor one independently reviewed pilot or replication with transparent results.
- 05 Produce leader-ready guidance that keeps uncertainty and safeguards intact.
Now forming
A small founding network. A serious public mission.
This preview intentionally includes no inquiry form, mailing-list capture, or visitor tracking. A governed partnership channel will open with the public launch.