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.

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.