Gun Violence Reduction Strategies: The Public Health Approach

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

John Jay College’s Research & Evaluation Center, in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the City of New York, is evaluating the Cure Violence model (formerly known as Chicago CeaseFire), a public health approach to gun violence reduction. This session will describe the operation of Cure Violence in New Orleans and New York City and present findings from the John Jay College evaluation.

Cure Violence relies on the efforts of community-based “outreach workers” and “violence interrupters” to identify individuals vulnerable to gun violence, and to use their personal relationships and social supports to dissuade them from engaging in violence. Cure Violence is designed to have effects beyond direct program participants. The developers of the model suggest that if these strategies are implemented with high levels of fidelity, they should begin to denormalize violence in the entire community. With this in mind, the John Jay research team set out to measure changes in attitudes towards violence of young adult men living in the targeted neighborhoods, rather than focusing on program participants only.

Sub Unit

• Area XII: Methodology / 69: Advances in Evaluation Research

Individual Presentations

• Cure Violence: A Public Health Approach to Gun Violence Reduction - Brent R. Decker, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Changing High Risk Group Norms Around Violence in Central City, New Orleans - Gregory N. Rattler Jr, CeaseFire New Orleans

• Violence Interruption Strategies in Central City, New Orleans - Daniel Allen, CeaseFire New Orleans

• Implementing the Cure Violence Hospital-Based Program in New Orleans - Carmen Demoiurelle, CeaseFire New Orleans

Chair

• Jeffrey Butts, John Jay College of Criminal Justice