N3 General Operating Support

A core and long-term focus of N3 is to work with a variety of organizations to develop ways that integrate network science into gun violence reduction, prevention, and treatment efforts such as street outreach work, trauma intervention, and police-community initiatives. N3 is currently working with the City of Chicago and dozens of other stakeholders to integrate these methods into on-going and emerging violence prevention and police reform efforts. N3’s work continues to be guided by four principles: 1) advancing engaged science and policy research; 2) translating research into action; 3) building networked partnerships through the advancement of research efforts that are integrated with community and organizational partnerships throughout the design, research, and implementation process; and 4) training the next generation of scholars, scientists, faculty, and citizen scientists. N3 is currently focused on three primary research areas that seek to leverage social network analytics to reduce gun violence and improve public safety in Chicago: (1) Street Outreach: N3 is evaluating several community-based street outreach efforts to measure the impact of the programs on reducing gun violence among individual program participants and within neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago. N3 is also assessing the victimization status of the network associates of participants to determine possible spillover effects of the programs within groups and social networks. Projects include the evaluation of Chicago CRED, the evaluation of Communities Partnering 4 Peace, and the evaluation of the city’s investments in violence prevention strategies. In addition, in late 2020, N3 launched a major initiative that seeks to leverage the power of network science to develop resources that bolster violence preventionists’ capacity to reach those at the very highest risk of experiencing gun violence. This effort will first be piloted with the FLIP (Flatlining Violen