Safer Together Coalition: An Alliance to Understand and Prevent Community Violence

Interpersonal violence is a public health problem that results in untold physical and emotional costs to individuals, and a heavy economic burden to communities and the healthcare institutions that serve them. Chicago has some of the highest rates of violent crime when compared with other metropolitan areas in the nation. The majority of Chicago’s violent crime burden is borne by several disadvantaged communities that suffer extremely high rates of violence, and within those communities violence disproportionally affects young people. While several programs to reduce violence exist within Chicago communities, they have not yielded sustained reductions in violence despite the heroic efforts of individuals on the ground. One potential explanation for this is that current violence reduction initiatives may not sufficiently target the most important factors that drive violence in their communities. The Community Violence Project is a prospective 4-year study funded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois that is designed to address the problem of community violence using a public health approach. We utilize the community-engaged research framework to improve our understanding of complex determinants of community violence, and then select community-based interventions to reduce violence based on that understanding. Project Aims are achieved using three strategic objectives. 

  • Objective 1: Develop a lasting partnership with key community stakeholders: We partner with two key community stakeholders (Bright Star Community Outreach and Near North Health Service Corporation) to build trust and mutual respect within target communities. Within the framework of community-based participatory research, community stakeholders assume an active role in every aspect of project design and implementation.  

  • Objective 2: Develop multi-level, multi-dimensional models of complex determinants of community violence: We recruit and prospectively follow a sample of young adults from Chicago’s high-burden communities and assess the individual and socio-ecological factors associated with violence using a combination of face-to-face interviews and surveys, telephone follow-up, and data from publicly available databases. Because the goal of this study is to develop interventions, we focus on modifiable risk factors. We regard violence as discrete epidemiologic events and utilize multidimensional statistical modeling to examine how static, dynamic, and socio-ecological pressures combine and interact to increase or decrease the likelihood of violent occurrences.   

  • Objective 3: Translate models to community-based interventions: We work with our community partners, with support from Northwestern Medicine’s Center for Prevention Implementation Methodology, a national leader in the emerging field of implementation science, to translate the improved understanding of complex determinants of violence into evidence-based community interventions.  This project leverages the extensive resources and partnerships of a leading academic medical center to design and implement vital services for high-need underserved populations in a way that is sensitive to unique ecosystems of both individuals and communities. The intermediate measure of success will be the uptake of violence-reducing interventions in the targeted population. The measurement and implementation methodology developed as a result of this research will be generalizable, and be made available to other communities to design interventions specific to their needs. As such, this research has a high potential for positive impact on a wide range of communities whose health is affected by high rates of violence. 

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