EDC’s Jenny Stern-Carusone Receives National Award from Safe States Alliance

Jenny Stern-Carusone, Associate Director of the Children’s Safety Network at EDC, is the 2026 recipient of the prestigious Safe States Injury and Violence Prevention Achievement Award. Each year, the Safe States Alliance confers the award to honor one individual or injury and violence prevention program that has accomplished outstanding work, advocacy, or research to advance the field.

In announcing the award, the Safe States Alliance spotlighted Jenny’s “leadership and programmatic contributions to improving child and adolescent safety across the nation.” In addition to Jenny’s decades of experience leading quality improvement initiatives to enhance children’s and youth’s health and wellbeing, she is a nationally recognized expert in motor vehicle traffic safety and a member of the National Safety Council Pediatric Vehicular Heatstroke Taskforce.

“I deeply appreciate this recognition from the Safe States Alliance, which leads such vital work to strengthen injury and violence prevention,” Jenny Stern-Carusone said. “When I accept the award, I will be doing so not just on behalf of myself, but for all of my colleagues at the Children’s Safety Network at EDC and the Health Resources and Services Administration that supports our important work across the United States.”

“Jenny’s almost 10 years of dedicated work in service of the Children’s Safety Network has significantly advanced our mission and helped shape the direction of child safety nationwide,” said Jennifer Leonardo, Director of the Children’s Safety Network. “This work has included her support for state and local health departments nationwide, as well as her impactful leadership of the Child Safety Learning Collaborative.”

As director of the Child Safety Learning Collaborative, Jenny has supported over 23 states and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in strengthening child safety systems to protect young people from harm. Her quality improvement guidance has helped build the injury and violence prevention workforce’s capacity to significantly improve child passenger safety, teen driver safety, suicide and self-harm prevention, bullying prevention, and sudden unexpected infant death prevention.

With colleagues, Jenny has helped advance the field’s knowledge through presenting and publishing key findings on the use of the Children’s Safety Network Framework for Quality Improvement and Innovation. These include a recent article in Injury Prevention and a new 2026 Children’s Safety Network white paper.

We invite you to learn more about EDC’s Child Health & Safety work, the work of the Children’s Safety Network, and the Safe States Alliance.