Violence is a leading cause of death and injury in the United States (Centers for Disease Prevention and Control [CDC], 2022). In 2019, New York State had 804-gun deaths of which 50 were children and teens between the ages of 0-19 (EGSGV, 2021). Between 2017 and 2021, Erie County averaged a rate of violence with firearms that was more than double the average rate for New York State in that same time period (Erie County Department of Health [ECDOH], 2023). Black people in Erie County experience a vastly disproportionate amount of gun violence (ECDOH, 2023). This community violence initiative looks at the reduction of community violence in high-risk communities in Erie County, NY. This is a multi-phase initiative that includes a community needs assessment, identification of abandoned lots and building, identification of community partners to share space and resources for education and counseling programs. Project goals for this initiative are to reduce community violence and to see individuals reporting an increased knowledge of community violence and self-efficacy through the use of safety measures such as gun safety locks.
Public Health Framework
Violence is a persistent health in the United States with homicide rates almost twice as high in citied as in rural areas (Cerdá, 2018). Investment in a public health, community-based violence prevention program may achieve similar reductions in violence as a much larger investment in hot-spot policing (Cerdá, 2018). Effective strategies for addressing violence should involve collaboration across multiple sectors (Cerdá, 2018). The prevention of ACEs and trauma can be promoted through addressing the social determinants of health or the conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age (Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia et al, 2016). By founding the project in a public health framework, the initiative will seek to address secondary and tertiary levels of prevention. Through project activities and goals, the initiative will address secondary prevention by providing education and other resources on the impact of community violence and adverse health outcomes, which will include strategies for residents to enhance protective factors and other mediators of community violence. Primary prevention will also be addressed by providing resources for transforming built environment from abandoned/vacant lots to provide more green spaces. The initiative will address the tertiary prevention by focusing interventions to combat gun violence, such as support to those who have been recently incarcerated, providing gun locks, and other services and resources to those individuals who have been personally affected by the community violence, including workforce training and re-entry programs.
Level(s) of Social Ecological Model
The strategies and goals outlined in this grant will be grounded in McLeroy’s social ecological model. (McLeroy et al., 1988). Educational programs centered on addressing violence and gun safety focus on the individual level of this model. These educational programs will aim to build knowledge and skills around the prevention of community violence by focusing on what the individual may be able to accomplish in gun safety within their own self-capacity. At the interpersonal level, home visitation, mentoring programs, and support groups for individuals who have been incarcerated will focus on building relationships within the community to reduce community violence. This will allow individuals to identify others within the community that have a shared lived experience with an aim of strengthening and helping to solidify the knowledge and skills that our obtained throughout the violence reduction initiative. At the organizational level, school-based, trauma informed programs will be implemented to identify and provide resources as well as interventions for children who have experienced violence. This will allow children and youth to be screened and identified as having potential adverse outcomes due to community violence and additional resources can be implemented to address these adverse effects of violence. Community level interventions would include implementing and strengthening partnerships with community organizations, including the Erie County Department of Health, the Erie County Gun Prevention Task Force and Live Well Erie. Through this community intervention, the community violence initiative can reach more individuals with more resources, expanding those who have access to the knowledge, skills, and resources to begin implementing increase safety interventions such as gun safety. At the policy level, interventions could include the passage of policies that would implement trauma informed programming within the school system as well as policies around built environment and trauma informed programming within re-entry programs for individuals who have incarcerated. These interventions will ensure that appropriate, culturally competent, trauma-informed programming is implemented across the board to address the needs of children through the school system and individuals who have been incarcerated as they begin re-entry programming upon release. This will hopefully ensure that community members receive the resources to prevent violence but also to help address the adverse effects of community violence on their health.
Trauma-Informed Principles
As the community violence initiative aims to reduce trauma through the reduction of community violence, having a trauma-informed framework is important. The initiative will be built on the trauma-informed principles outlined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2014). The principles that will be built into this program include safety, peer support, empowerment, voice, and choice, and cultural, historical and gender issues. Safety will be addressed by creating spaces that are physically safe and welcoming. Staff training will include skills for interpersonal interactions that help to promote a sense of safety for community members that will be utilizing the interventions of this initiative.
Peer support will be addressed through mentoring programs that will help individuals build trust, enhance collaboration, and utilize their shared experiences to promoted increased safety interventions and help to lower the adverse effects of community violence on both the individual and the community.
Empowerment, voice, and choice will be addressed by giving and listening to the experiences of individuals that utilize this initiative, whether it be through program staff or clients. Voices will be supported in all decision-making aspects of the program with an added emphasis of collaboration with determining plan of action and building of self-efficacy and self-advocacy.
Finally, the program will work to move past cultural and racial stereotypes and biases by putting into action policies, protocols, and processes that address gender responsiveness, cultural connections, and racial, ethnic, and cultural needs of the community served. This will be evident throughout our initiative’s mission and vision statement, core values of the program, staff training, and program design and implementation.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022, June 8). Community violence prevention |violence prevention|injury Center|CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/violencepr...yviolence/index.html
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022, February 28). Injuries and violence are leading causes of death. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wis...sons%20aged%201%2D44.
Cerdá, M., Tracy, M., & Keyes, K. M. (2018). Reducing urban violence: A contrast of public health and criminal justice approaches. Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 29(1), 142–150. https://doi.org/10.1097/EDE.0000000000000756
Erie County Department of Health. (2023). (rep.). Health Equity in Erie County. Buffalo, NY.
McLeroy, K. R., Bibeau, D., Steckler, A., & Glanz, K. (1988). An ecological perspective on health promotion programs. Health Education Quarterly, 15(4), 351–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019818801500401
SAMHSA’s Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative. (2014, July). SAMHSA's Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. (2021, February 9). New York gun deaths: 2019. The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. https://efsgv.org/state/new-york/
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