California Cures Violence: A Health Approach to Violence

Conventional approaches to gun violence inaccurately view violence as a manifestation of moral corruption on the part of the offender. The scientific literature has alternatively shown that violence is a product of psychosocial and cognitive processes. Epidemiological studies demonstrate that violence indeed behaves like a health problem: it is transmitted through exposure, acquired through brain mechanisms and social processes, and can therefore be effectively treated and prevented using public health methods. Cure Violence (CV) has developed an approach based on this understanding, which has been proven to save and improve lives. By partnering with leaders in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, CV seeks to reduce violence across the state through training, technical assistance, and capacity building to implement CV’s health approach, while shifting the prevailing discourse of violence to one that characterizes it is a public health issue.

CV takes a public health approach grounded in an understanding that violence follows an infectious process: it clusters and spreads geographically, is transmitted through exposure, and is perpetuated/reinforced through social norms. The CV approach therefore focuses on (1) detection/interruption; (2) behavior change; and, (3) shifting community norms. The model is based on the World Health Organization’s epidemic control approach. It uses three key methods to stop transmission of violent behavior: (1) direct violence interruption via mediation and follow up (2) behavior and attitude change, (3) group norm change. The model’s theoretical framework portrays the two principal pathways of CV programs’ hypothesized effects on gun violence. One pathway includes program activities that lead to changes in individual behavior, both among CV program participants as well as among other peripheral high-risk members of the same neighborhoods. This includes conflict mediations to immediately interrupt violence, outreach to intensively work with participants over the long term to shift their trajectory away from violence, and group meetings to provide social support in embracing nonviolent skills and values. The second pathway includes activities to denormalize violence across the community by changing the broader social norms that perpetuate it. Concurrent with work with the highest risk individuals, staff mobilize public education campaigns, post-shooting vigils, peace summits, and other community events to denormalize violence more broadly.

Vision

California Cures Violence

CV envisions that by treating violence as a public health issue, violence can be eradicated. This translates not only to improvements in standard health outcomes, but also in indicators of equity, as violence disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. Expanded support would enable CV to scale training and technical assistance to other high-need communities, effectively reducing violence at higher levels.

Cure Violence

California Cures Violence: A Health Approach to Violence

Model and Strategy

Impact

Leadership

Gary Slutkin, MD

Ricardo (Cobe) Williams

R. Brent Decker