Interventions to Reduce Community Violence in High-Risk Populations: Modeling the Complex Determinants of Violence

The purpose of this study is to identify data-driven interventions to reduce rates of community violence in high-risk populations. The project will be carried out by the Isaac Ray Research Program in Behavioral Sciences and the Law at Northwestern Medicine – a multidisciplinary collaboration of behavioral and social scientists with extensive expertise in measurement, programmatic development, and intervention implementation. We will leverage the existing academic and community partnerships of a leading academic medical center to improve our understanding of the complex determinants of community violence, and then use this understanding to select community-based interventions to reduce violence. The proposed study is a translational research project that applies four key assets of public health research to the study of community violence: (1) building on the existing scientific base to expand our understanding of the violence problem, (2) utilizing multidimensional data modeling methods to assess multi-level determinants of the violence problem, (3) employing translational science to turn scientific findings into interventions that are tailored to communities and individuals who reside in them, and (4) utilizing the community-based participatory research approach to engage key community stakeholders in all aspects of the research process in order to optimize the uptake of violence-reducing interventions by the community. The proposed study directly addresses the intent of the BCBS Affordability Cures Research Consortium initiative to champion a public health model of community violence. The immediate impact of the proposed work will be twofold. First, the measurement and implementation methodology developed as a result of this research will be generalized and made available to other communities to design interventions specific to their needs. Second, the current project will allow us to demonstrate feasibility for a larger federally sponsored project in partnership with community stakeholders to implement and assess the effectiveness of selected interventions. Ultimately, this research has a high potential for positive impact on a wide range of communities whose health is affected by high rates of violence.