Developing a Power-Building Model for Community Violence Prevention
Defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), community violence “happens between unrelated individuals, who may or may not know each other, generally outside the home,” and impacts millions of Americans every year. According to FBI data from 2022, an estimated 1,232,428 violent crime offenses were committed in this country, and more than 26,000 people died due to homicide. This represents a significant public health problem, and it is also preventable.
Prevention programs developed at the local level, with leaders, individuals with lived experiences, community-based organizations (CBOs) and health departments, can center the voices and experiences of the communities that are most impacted by community violence. Community power-building is an organizing approach that focuses on individuals most impacted by a social or systemic issue and empowers those people to take the lead on influencing changes in practices and policies in their local areas.
About the Project
The CDC Foundation is partnering with Human Impact Partners (HIP) and Health Resources in Action (HRiA) to pilot a project to gauge the readiness and applicability of community power-building strategies for violence prevention interventions in four US cities: Atlanta, Georgia; Boston, Massachusetts; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Oakland, California.

The goal is to co-create a model for this type of program, alongside community members, organizations and health departments. HIP is providing technical assistance and webinars on community power-building strategies, and HRiA is working on a program called WEaving A Violence-prevention Ecosystem (WEAVE). Through this component, HRiA is conducting a landscape analysis of violence prevention interventions in each community and then hosting two-day convenings to further engage these various stakeholders to continue to map the violence prevention ecosystem and make connections across organizations working in this space. Feedback from the webinars and in-person convenings will inform the development of a toolkit tailored to help community violence prevention organizations work together towards their goals with a shared understanding of health equity and community power-building strategies as well as how best to lift up the voices and experiences of the local areas that are most impacted by violence. Then, this model could be collectively used to identify, select and implement appropriate interventions, programs and practices.
This project is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and as part of a financial assistance award totaling $750,000 and is 100% funded by CDC/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. government.
Supporting CBOs to Combat Community Violence
Preventing Global Child Sexual Abuse
Jurisdictional Opioid Projects
Warrior Built: Strengthening the Eco-System for Veteran Suicide Prevention
In July 2021, the CDC Foundation and CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control worked with DC Design, a social impact and design strategy firm, to host public, federal and private partners at the Warrior Built: Strengthening the Eco-System for Veteran Suicide Prevention convening. This was the first convening of its kind focusing on the collaborative impact with state health departments. The convening was designed to:
- increase linkages between state/local public health partners, community-based veteran-serving organizations and private sector partners;
- to catalyze state and community action; and
- to activate public-private partnerships that help fill gaps and create more opportunity around an upstream approach to veteran suicide prevention.
As part of this initiative, the CDC Foundation utilized a human-centered design approach to identify partner needs and potential opportunities for collaboration to help advance the upstream approach to veteran suicide prevention.
From the convening, persona profiles and stakeholder priority documents were created to highlight the gaps between partners and the individual needs of each group. These resources are provided for partners to share with other organizations working in the field.
The CDC Foundation continues to work on building resources and tools to share with the veteran and military community to enhance communication, increase partnership, and support partners as they work together to implement upstream veteran suicide prevention programming. This webpage will be updated as new resources are developed.
Blog from November 2021: Building Better Relationships to Serve Veterans
Disparities in Suicide:
- Veterans have an adjusted suicide rate that is 52.3% greater than the non-veteran US adult population.
- People who have previously served in the military account for about 13.7% of suicides among adults in the United States.
- In 2019, 1.6% of former active-duty service members aged 18-25 years reported making a suicide attempt during the previous 12 months. This was an increase from 0.9% in 2009.
This webpage is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $140,000 with 100 percent funded by CDC/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.
Building Capacity to Prevent Veteran Suicide
Veterans are a particularly vulnerable population. Data from the Department of Veteran Affairs from 2019 show the veteran suicide rate was 1.5 times higher than non-veterans. The rate of suicide among younger veterans aged 18-34 far exceeds that of other age groups, while the number of veteran deaths by suicide is highest among those aged 55-74.
- Suicide is a leading cause of death for Americans overall and rose 33 percent between 1999 and 2019.
- In 2020, the year for which we have the most recent mortality data, nearly 46,000 lives were lost to suicide.
- In fact, many people who die by suicide are not known to have a diagnosed mental health condition at the time of death.
Mental health conditions are often seen as the sole cause of suicide, but suicide is rarely caused by any single factor. Other problems often contribute to suicide, such as those related to relationships, substance misuse, physical health, and job, money, legal, or housing stress.
Suicide is preventable.
Suicide is rarely caused by any single factor, which means there are multiple pathways for prevention. To help veteran-serving organizations (VSOs) better evaluate the effectiveness of their suicide prevention programs, the CDC Foundation was awarded a federal grant to work on the Veteran Suicide Prevention: Evaluation Demonstration (VSPE) Project in partnership with the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
Through the VSPE project the CDC Foundation awards and administers short-term mini grants to VSOs that are implementing suicide prevention programs focused on reducing risk factors and promote protective factors. The funding supports VSO grantees in developing, implementing and strengthening program evaluation. VSOs use this data and feedback to continually assess and improve their work by ensuring they reach their target populations, assessing the effectiveness of the program among specific populations and identifying successes, challenges and areas to focus their resources. VSOs develop either formative, process or outcome evaluation to understand program efficiency and to measure the extent to which a program aligns with its objectives.
Program Impact
The VSPE project has awarded 17 veteran-serving organizations in the five years of the project which have contributed to advancing capacity of evaluation efforts, promoting evidence-based strategies for suicide prevention, and increasing communication to combat stigmatization of suicide. Read more in the CDC Foundation’s Impact Report Year 1-3.
CDC is working towards broader, community-level protection against suicide. By building the evidence base around what works within existing VSO prevention programs, this project aims ultimately to prevent and reduce veteran suicide by reaching those at risk before they are in crisis.
Impact Stories:
Pagination
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