Originally Published in PWPORG, By Nabeela N. Barbari, Executive Vice President, OTHSolutions

The very act of prevention is, by and large, less sensational than response.

The examples are endless. Staying out of the sun to prevent skin cancer, flossing to prevent cavities, and replacing your roof before it leaks.

Yet, sending water bottles and generators to a community recovering from a devastating hurricane remains the normalized approach to saving lives after a natural disaster.

As the most effective lifesaving approach, we have yet to normalize investing in more risk-resilient infrastructure during the rebuilding phase – or applying equitable recovery principles into federal processes such that resources are more justly dispersed across all communities and populations.

One of the most horrific yet most frequent examples of prevention being less sensational than response is in the space of targeted violence.

For a myriad of reasons that undoubtedly warrant greater discussion, seeing a SWAT unit swarm to take out an active shooter is simply more captivating than establishing a social service and public health care network around families and communities.

The goal should be to prevent someone from becoming violent before they start.

Our society has normalized tactical responses as the most effective response to stop an active shooting in progress… yet it does nothing to prevent it.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but 9/11 was a pivotal moment in my life and led me to pursue a career in national security. Many of my cohorts were galvanized by the same events.

While less civic-minded people turned to an unconscionable level of nationalism, the attacks bolstered my patriotism. I felt compelled to engage, and this passion has propelled me along very unexpected paths in my career.

Prior to joining OTHSolutions, a national security consulting firm based in the Washington, DC area, I’ve spent the majority of my career at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House National Security Council.

While I’ve worked on the most diverse groupings of security programs imaginable, there was always an underlying theme: Prevention is truly the best form of protection.

Today, more than ever, I’m reminded of how our nation has yet to meaningfully embrace and normalize prevention as the best form of protection. Although I am not a mother, I am a “bonus mom,” a Godmother, and an “Auntie” to 10 beautiful humans.

I am also a daughter, sister, friend, and neighbor – which are enough in and of themselves to care the extent that I do about targeted violence prevention.

As back-to-school activities commence for the 2023-2024 school year, I find myself triggered. One needn’t scroll too far in their news feed to see evidence of the need for stronger social services and public health care networks for K-12 families and communities.

I look at K-12 school safety through the same lens from which I look at many other security risks.

Elementary schools, once a hub for local communities, now lock their doors at all times. Locker time has been replaced with lockdown drills, and new weapon detection and alerting systems continue to receive more funding than the programs needed to create supportive school cultures and ensure the availability of other prevention-oriented services.

While these precautions are a reflection of our current reality, they do nothing to change reality itself. A locked door will not fix the broken person who feels compelled to commit an act of violence. As a society, we will never be able to arrest and prosecute our way to safety. While prevention is unequivocally the best solution, it’s also the most complicated.

Not only because of the general lackluster nature and lack of funding discussed earlier, as those are merely symptoms of the problem.

The problem is that our nation’s decision-makers have yet to embrace, normalize, and invest in prevention as the best form of protection.

While there is certainly a need to empirically understand this problem much further, that is neither an easy nor quick discussion.

My goal here is to simply share a few thoughts on a topic that we all care for deeply. If, like me, you find yourself triggered by back-to-school festivities, you are not alone. All we can do is share ideas and a commitment to keeping our children and the K-12 academic community safe as best we can.

I offer three quick considerations from a national security practitioner and ally – in hopes of inspiring local action and cascading national culture change from the walls of your school to the halls of Capitol Hill.

First – Follow the Money:

We must unite to shape, amplify, and improve the federally funded products and services currently available to all communities.

Every April 15, we pay for tools, grants, information products, and other capabilities designed to help K-12 academic communities advance their safety awareness and security programming.

Let’s join forces and become even more responsible consumers of these goods.

Continue reading on PWPORG… Page 5

(Learn more. Nabeela Barbari (Executive Vice President, OTH Solutions), Steve Sund, (Former Chief, U.S. Capitol Police), and Dan O’Connor (Director, Field Security Division, Office of the Chief Security Officer, OCSO, FEMA) discuss the perception of patriotism in modern America. Courtesy of The Center for Homeland Defense and Security Naval Postgraduate School and YouTube. Posted on Mar 16, 2023.)

Nabeela N. Barbari, is the Executive Vice President of OTHSolutions, Inc. a national security consulting firm where she leads strategy and growth operations.

Before joining OTHSolutions, Nabeela was a federal civil servant for 15 years, most notably serving as the Director of Resilience and Response at the White House National Security Council and Associate Chief of Policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

During her DHS tenure, Nabeela also served as the Deputy Associate Director of Strategy and Resources for the CISA Cybersecurity Division and on a team that set up the National Risk Management Center.

As Senior Advisor to the Secretary at the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and to the Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, Nabeela spent years advancing programs that delivered a range of federal resources and services to communities nationwide.

Building coalitions and multidisciplinary approaches to preventing violence is Nabeela’s passion and priority. She is committed to creating safe spaces for government, social service and health care providers, emergency managers, community-based organizations, academia, and law enforcement to engage for the shared purpose of optimizing security and preparedness.

Nabeela is a life-long learner with degrees from the US Naval Postgraduate School, George Mason University, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

As an active community member, she is a mentor, school volunteer, and guest lecturer. Nabeela was born and raised in the DC area where she resides today.

Reprinted with permission courtesy of PWPORG.

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