Larry Cohen, UNITY Co-Chair
Executive Director, Prevention Institute
Larry Cohen, MSW, Prevention Institute's Founder and Executive Director, is a nationally recognized leader on how to use prevention to advance community health and promote equity. Areas of expertise include: economics of prevention, health reform, injury and unintentional injury, and preventing violence.
Rachel Davis, UNITY Project Director
Managing Director, Prevention Institute
Rachel Davis, MSW, supervises projects, conducts research, and facilitates strategic planning, coalitions, and trainings addressing community violence, youth violence, violence against women, and the intersection of violence prevention and early childhood development.
Billie Weiss, UNITY Co-Chair
Associate Director for Outreach and Communications, Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center
Billie Weiss, MPH, focuses on the data and evaluation of policies related to reducing and preventing violence. She also studies the epidemiology of gang homicides and assaults, and intimate partner violence.
Deborah Prothrow-Stith, UNITY Co-Chair
Adjunct Professor, Harvard School of Public Health
Deborah Prothrow-Stith, MD, is a nationally recognized leader in violence prevention and former emergency room doctor. Her Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents is used in schools in all fifty states as well as internationally. As Massachussetts' first female Commissioner of Public Health, Dr. Prothrow-Stith established the nation's first Violence Prevention Office at a State Health Department. Her book, Deadly Consequences: How Violence Is Destroying Our Teenage Population and a Plan to Begin Solving the Problem, was the first to present the public health perspective on violence prevention to a mass audience.
Howard Pinderhughes, Consultant
UCSF Institute for Health and Aging
Howard Pinderhughes, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Pinderhughes is the author of Race in the Hood: Conflict and Violence Among Urban Youth which examined the dynamics of racial violence in New York City and his forthcoming book, Dealing With Danger: How Inner City Youth Cope with the Violence that Surrounds Them that examines the production of youth violence and how urban adolescents think about, experience and make decisions about the use of violence. Additionally, he served as the Co-PI for the Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention, one of the CDC's Academic Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention.
