UNITY Updates

Public Health Contributions to Preventing Violence
Looking to prevent violence and not just react after the fact? This UNITY fact sheet highlights how public health adds value to any effort to address violence and complements criminal justice approaches. “Public Health Contributions to Preventing Violence” describes how public health’s unique perspective and areas of expertise could strengthen your initiative.

UNITY City Network Member Updates

• Seattle’s Safe Youth, Safe Community: Promising results out of Seattle show that violence is preventable, not inevitable. The progress report “Safe Youth, Safe Community” (pdf)  shows that arrests of youth for violent offences fell by 20.5 percent in just two years, among other early successes. Learn more about Seattle’s approach by reading “City Voices and Perspectives: Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative.”
  

• St. Louis in the News: Watch the CBS News interview of Judge Jimmie Edwards speaking about Innovative Concept Academy in St. Louis. This school was founded to educate young people who have been expelled from traditional schools for serious behavioral problems.

New Publications and Resources

• Social and Economic Costs of Violence: The Institute of Medicine’s Global Forum for Violence Prevention released a workshop summary, “Social and Economic Costs of Violence.” Read pages 112 to 118 for a summary of UNITY Project Director Rachel Davis' presentation on 10 ways to think about the value of prevention, and browse the publication for guidance from UNITY Co-Chair Deborah Prothrow-Stith and other leaders in the field.

• Los Angeles’ Place-Based Evaluation: Building on the city’s progress in reducing crime rates, the “Community Safety Scorecard: City of Los Angeles 2011” calls attention to safety gaps across L.A. neighborhoods. The report assesses both the risk and protective factors of violence to highlight which areas require the most urgent attention and investment. Read the Community Safety Scorecard to see if this evaluation method makes sense for your city, and explore the links between violence and equity in this UNITY Fact Sheet.

• Best Practices Guide for Hospitals to Stop Violence: “Violence Is Preventable: Best Practices Guide for Launching & Sustaining a Hospital-Based Program to Break the Cycle of Violence” (pdf) shares lessons learned by hospitals across the country and presents the latest research on effective violence interventions. Published by the National Network of Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs (NNHVIP), this extensive guide provides new ideas for improving and replicating successful programs. NNHVIP is a UNITY partner.

• Promote Resilience to Prevent Gang Recruitment: A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that young people with strong coping skills and supportive, involved parents are less likely to join a gang. This means that prevention efforts might be more successful if they focused on promoting resilience in addition to reducing the risk factors that make violence more likely. Read the journal article online.

CeaseFire Model Stops Shootings in Baltimore
A rigorous evaluation of Baltimore’s Safe Streets program shows that street outreach and violence interruption strategies can reduce homicides in affected neighborhoods by more than half. Based on the Chicago CeaseFire model, Safe Streets was evaluated by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with funding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Learn more about the study or read the full report. CeaseFire’s Ameena Matthews appears on The Colbert Report on February 1 and again for Frontline's February 14 premiere of "The Interrupters” documentary. CeaseFire is a UNITY partner and is mentioned in the UNITY Policy Platform. 

UNITY is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of the CDC’s national youth violence prevention initiative, Striving to Reduce Youth Violence Everywhere (STRYVE), and in part by The Kresge Foundation and The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF). Created in 1992 as an independent, private foundation, TCWF’s mission is to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness, education and disease prevention programs. For more information, visit www.preventioninstitute.org/unity.