The Urban Agenda, developed by UNITY in collaboration with representatives from thirteen of the country's largest urban cities, calls for investment in the development, implementation, coordination, and evaluation of effective and sustainable approaches to prevent community and gang violence. The Urban Agenda calls attention to the need for city and neighborhood-level violence prevention strategies, grounded in research and informed by communities, that are designed to have the greatest impact in preventing violence. The Urban Agenda recommends that we:

• Invest in cities to implement effective and sustainable approaches to prevent community and gang violence, with attention to city and neighborhood-level violence prevention strategies designed to have the greatest impact, including school-based violence prevention, reducing children's exposure to violence, and street outreach.
• Support local planning and implementation through training and capacity building; a national communications campaign; and data, research, and evaluation.
• Encourage collaboration at federal and state levels to support local, urban efforts to prevent violence. This includes creating a mechanism for collaboration in federal and state governments and enhancing public health's capacity to address the ongoing public health crisis of violence.

Furthermore, the UNITY Urban Agenda complements and informs CDC's national youth violence prevention initiative, Striving To Reduce Youth Violence Everywhere (STRYVE), which encourages all communities to implement youth violence prevention action that is comprehensive and multi-sector, guided by a public health approach, and based upon the best available evidence.

To learn more, please visit the UNITY homepage. You can also find strategies, tools and resources on this topic in our Preventing Violence & Reducing Injury focus area.

Read the UNITY Policy Platform, a summary of The UNITY Urban Agenda for Preventing Violence Before it Occurs: Bringing a Multi-Sector Prevention Approach to Scale in U.S. Cities, developed in partnership with the UNITY City Network.