June 24, 2024

Gun violence is a public health crisis that affects communities across the United States. By fostering a collective commitment to understanding and addressing this challenge, we can work toward creating safer environments so that all community members can thrive.

In the U.S., more than 40,000 people per year, on average, are killed by homicide or suicide in gun-related injuries. While state and city leaders across the country are working to reduce gun violence in their communities, many do so without collaboration across sectors, sufficient data on gun violence, and the community input necessary to make meaningful and sustainable changes.

The WestEd Justice and Prevention Research Center (JPRC) conducts nationwide research and evaluation to address justice, crime, violence prevention, public health, and safety. A new JPRC initiative, the Violence Prevention Navigation Framework (VPNF), helps state and local leaders gain a clearer understanding of the factors contributing to or preventing violence within their communities. With these insights and technical assistance, leaders are better equipped to develop policies and practices that support safe and equitable futures for children, youth, and adults.

This blog post explores VPNF’s novel approach to addressing violence.

Using Local Data to Create Systemic and Sustainable Change

A key component of addressing gun violence is understanding the unique challenges facing a community at the local level. But states and localities often struggle to take an inventory of what violence prevention efforts are already happening in their jurisdictions. Not having a complete picture often leads to the duplication of efforts.

Additionally, lack of data, specifically cross-sector data, can lead state and city leaders to large investments in siloed solutions, as well as ineffective and often controversial technologies and strategies.

“Historically, violence prevention efforts have been fragmented and underfunded, forcing localities to focus primarily on short-term solutions,” said the VPNF team in a recent Q&A.

Critical to the VPNF’s approach is the use of big data, machine learning, and local partners’ knowledge to analyze risk factors for gun violence. VPNF’s data analysis comprises over 70 community- and society-level factors that act as risk factors for or protect against community gun violence. The following wheel highlights some of these factors.

Potential Risk and Protective Factors that act as risk factors for or protect against community gun violence.

Their technology then analyzes these data and lists the factors according to their level of impact. It can also show how each factor has changed over time.

Providing Evidence-Informed Recommendations for Sustainable Improvement

Through interviews and surveys with community and government interest holders, the team works to identify the factors influencing local gun violence. This approach helps prioritize those with the greatest impact, whether positive or negative.

“By conducting interviews and surveys with key community and government members, including those directly affected by violence, we can uncover the reasons behind these factors and incorporate the people’s perspective to complement the quantitative data,” said Lori Toscano, Director of Justice Technical Assistance. “Ultimately, this approach provides city leaders with a comprehensive understanding of the community and societal root causes of gun violence in their community.”

Based on the data, the team provides leaders a series of recommendations for programs, policies, and strategies to address these identified factors. These recommendations will inspire data-informed funding and strategic decision-making to address root causes and historic inequities.

“VPNF provides a city with a stronger foundation for long-term gun violence prevention, based on comprehensive data and community input,” says the team.

Empowering Communities and Advancing Growth

Racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately impacted by gun violence, which is highly concentrated in a relatively small number of neighborhoods that lack equitable resources and are racially segregated.

By analyzing local data on violence and conducting a thorough assessment of existing programs, VPNF helps jurisdictions in efforts to address historical inequities that are prevalent in Black and Brown communities.

Enhancing safety and well-being can help improve outcomes for all members of a community. Through practical, evidence-based solutions, state and local leaders have the power to make informed, strategic decisions about gun violence prevention.

May 29, 2024

Despite welcome declines in the homicide rate across the United States, estimates indicate that more than 18,000 persons died by homicide in 2023. The pain and suffering caused by such violence is dramatic, extending beyond direct victims to exert harmful impacts on family members and loved ones, first responders, and communities. Using data-informed strategies is essential for understanding the risk factors contributing to these tragedies, enabling interest-holders to develop targeted interventions that can disrupt these cycles of violence. But what tools are needed to improve this process?

We invited JPRC’s leaders in violence prevention to respond to this and other related questions. Lori Toscano is Director of Justice Technical Assistance, and Shaun Ali and Kerwin Henderson are Technical Assistance Specialists. They oversee several projects focused on helping local and school communities address violence and are the main technical assistance providers to local communities receiving violence prevention grants in Pennsylvania. They recently collaborated with our partner, Muflehun, to develop a new tool known as the Violence Prevention Navigation Framework (VPNF) to help communities address violence. The following answers represent collective responses from the team.

Violence prevention is a priority in the United States. However, you say there are gaps in how violence is addressed. What are the gaps?

Historically, violence prevention efforts have been fragmented and underfunded, forcing localities to focus primarily on short-term solutions. States and localities often struggle taking inventory of what violence prevention efforts already occur in their jurisdictions, leading to duplication of effort. Lack of data, specifically cross-sector data, can lead to large investments in siloed solutions and ineffective, often controversial, technology and strategies, such as surveillance and heavy-handed enforcement.

You have developed the VPNF process to help communities address these gaps. What is VPNF?

The VPNF is a new method for addressing gun violence. It uses big data, machine learning, and local partners’ collective knowledge to analyze community- and society-level risk and protective factors related to gun violence. Using that information, the VPNF process then prioritizes the factors that have the greatest impact, whether positive or negative, on local gun violence. With that list of factors, we then provide decision-makers with evidence-based recommendations for program and strategy investments that can have the biggest impact.

Let’s say a city wants to use VPNF. How does it help them?

VPNF provides state and local leaders with a clear understanding of the specific challenges that their communities face regarding gun violence. For a city, it gives them access to the full landscape of the quantitative data analysis which consists of more than 70 community- and society-level factors that act as risk factors for—or protective factors against—community gun violence. Our technology then analyzes these data and lists the factors according to their level of impact. It can also show how each factor has changed over time.

With this list, we have a starting point to dig deeper. Through interviews and surveys with relevant community and government stakeholders, including those directly impacted by the violence, we can work to identify why the factors are showing up as they are and can glean the people perspective to supplement the quantitative data. In the end, the city’s leaders have a clear picture of the community and society-level root causes for gun violence in their locality. We can then provide a series of recommendations of programs, policies, and strategies to address these identified causes, which can result in data-informed funding and strategic decision-making to meaningfully address root causes and historic inequities. VPNF provides a city with a stronger foundation for long-term gun violence prevention, based on comprehensive data and community input.

Once you have provided the data and recommendations to a jurisdiction, what happens then?

They will then need to work toward implementation, which can happen in a variety of ways. For instance, a jurisdiction may decide to use our recommendations to develop or revise their transit plan, reconsider locations of physical and mental health services, increase civic engagement opportunities, or pursue some combination of those approaches. Additionally, we can work with the jurisdiction on how to use the data and recommendations to bolster current and future violence prevention and intervention efforts. They may decide to implement initiatives to address the factors identified in our analyses, separately or as a part of a broader strategy or campaign. In any case, our team can provide technical assistance, consulting, and advisory services to help jurisdictions implement our recommendations.

There are many types of violence (e.g., targeted violence, mass shootings, gang violence). Can VPNF inform strategies for addressing all of them?

Yes, VPNF can be adapted to address other types of violence if risk and protective factors have been identified and robust data are available. In the same way that we are analyzing over 70 factors that contribute to or mitigate gun violence with VPNF, we can adapt the machine learning to analyze risk and protective factors for any other form of violence. The process for incorporating qualitative data would be similar, and so would the process for generating recommendations. Our hope is to learn from each VPNF engagement, initially focused on community-level prevention of gun violence, and to use those experiences collectively to evaluate, enhance, and adjust the process. Over time, we hope to use the lessons learned to adapt VPNF to additional forms of violence.

If communities or jurisdictions are interested in VPNF, what should they do?

For those interested in our framework and wanting to learn more about how VPNF can help them comprehensively address gun violence in their communities, they should visit the VPNF web page and complete the Contact Form. We will then set up a call to talk through their needs and how the JPRC can help.