Raiders team with Safenest on education

The official health care partner of the Las Vegas Raiders has pledged $500,000 to help Safenest provide student-athletes and coaches in Clark County with education about domestic and sexual violence.

“Safenest is acting as a vital resource to community members throughout Nevada,” Mikelle Moore, Intermountain Healthcare’s senior vice president and chief community health officer, said Tuesday in a virtual news conference. “We’re immensely grateful for Safenest and for the many ways they support health in the communities in which we live, work and play.”

Safenest is Nevada’s largest, most comprehensive nonprofit dedicated to ending domestic violence.

Intermountain’s donation will help the nonprofit launch Coaching Boys Into Men and Athletes as Leaders — “two incredible programs that support important relationships between high school coaches and their athletes, and that leverages that space to have conversations of consequence, conversations that build respect for ourselves and respect for others,” Safenest CEO Liz Ortenburger said.

The programs will run in Clark County in 2021 and 2022.

“By helping athletes navigate the reality that violence doesn’t equal power, and power doesn’t equal violence, coaches are laying the foundation for athletes to navigate lifelong healthy relationships,” Ortenburger said. “With the Raiders’ participation and the investment by Intermountain Healthcare, Safenest is poised to lead this partnership and put in place the building blocks to end domestic and sexual violence in our Las Vegas community and beyond.”

As Ortenburger spoke, Marc Badain, president of the Raiders, nodded.