East San Jose PEACE Partnership uses community strengths to counteract violence and trauma.
The East San Jose PEACE (Prevention Efforts Advance Community Equity) Partnership is a comprehensive violence prevention effort working to build a healthy, peaceful, and empowered community throughout three zip codes of San Jose, CA. The PEACE Partnership unites neighborhood residents, grassroots community organizations, businesses, healthcare organizations, youth leaders, schools, and many Santa Clara County and San Jose government agencies.
With backbone support from the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health and funding from the California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative (CACHI), they’re working to achieve health equity for East San Jose residents by pushing for policies and practices to improve the community environment. These include advocating for affordable housing, promoting safe relationships and youth leadership, reducing access to dangerous weapons, creating community gathering spaces, and beautifying the neighborhood.
Prevention Institute supports the PEACE Partnership through a contract with the Santa Clara County Public Health Department. We provide training, technical assistance and consultation on prevention of community violence and intimate partner violence, promotion of health equity and community resilience, multisector collaboration, communications and narrative change, and community-driven policy and systems change. We help to ensure that all aspects of the work embody the Partnership’s values of distributed leadership that centers the needs and power of residents, and racial, gender, and generational justice.
The Partnership’s work builds on the progress achieved during the 2017 planning year, during which Prevention Institute supported the creation of the East San Jose PEACE Plan. The comprehensive plan guides the Partnership’s work in the areas of resident engagement, governance, interventions, financing and sustainability, communications, evaluation, and more. Prevention Institute’s Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience (ACE|R) framework supported the planning phase, and helped the Partnership focus on solutions that address structural and community-level contributors to violence and safety, and incorporate strategies to promote equity, healing, and resilience. To learn more about the first year of the PEACE Partnership’s work, see Cultivating Resilience to Address Adverse Community Experiences in an Accountable Community for Health: The East San Jose PEACE Partnership.
The East San Jose PEACE Partnership is one of six pilots in California supported by the CACHI initiative. CACHI is funded by The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield of California Foundation, and Sierra Health Foundation.