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What Are Funders Doing To Prevent Violence?

For more than twenty years, “federal law has effectively halted” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) ability to do research on the subject of gun violence, a March 1, 2018, Wall Street Journal article reminds readers. But “Democrats and some centrist Republicans [have been] pushing to eliminate a provision” known as the Dickey Amendment, which in past spending bills has prohibited the agency from using funds to advocate for or promote gun control, reporter Kristina Peterson and colleagues explain. The “ambiguous” language “didn’t expressly prevent scientific research,” but because of scrutiny, “the CDC has sharply curbed” its research in this area.

Agency instructions accompanying the government spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump in March 2018 contain a sentence noting that the CDC has the authority to research the causes of gun violence, Nell Greenfieldboyce says in NPR’s online “Shots.” (In 2013 the title of a Chronicle of Philanthropy op-ed by the Joyce Foundation’s president, Ellen Alberding, was “Philanthropy Needs to Do More to Back Research about Gun Violence.”)

The CDC considers violence “a serious public health problem,” according to its website. For one thing, many survivors of violence “suffer physical, mental, and/or emotional health problems” throughout the remainder of their lives. Thus, the agency is “committed to stopping violence before it begins.” It has several funded programs and initiatives on various forms of violence. Its website also describes how to use a four-step public health approach to prevent violence. Such a model first defines and monitors the problem, then identifies risk factors and protective factors, next develops and tests prevention strategies, and finally ensures “widespread adoption” of effective programs.

Following are examples of recent foundation funding focused on preventing violence of various types.

Recent Grants

Up to fifteen people were chosen in April 2018 as Design Team Fellows to participate in Blue Shield of California Foundation’s Prevention Approaches to Break the Cycle of Domestic Violence “Co-Design Lab.” The focus is on preventing such violence in California. This team of “leaders from diverse backgrounds will learn, reflect, and co-create together to develop promising [and fresh] ideas and solutions to break the multi-generational cycle of domestic violence,” Lucia Corral Peña of the foundation explained in a February 2018 blog post. Those selected as fellows will participate in six gatherings in 2018, be able to “connect and collaborate with visionary leaders and influencers,” and test ideas with people in the field.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health announced in a January 2018 press release that a leading national expert on gun violence prevention, Daniel Webster, will become its first Bloomberg Professor of American Health. Webster, who directs the school’s Center for Gun Policy and Research, “will lead new educational, research, and practice efforts to reduce violence.” This endowed position is funded under the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, which “aims to tackle five complex and urgent threats to public health in the United States,” including violence. (In 2016 Bloomberg Philanthropies awarded the school a $300 million gift for that initiative.)

In response to a question from Health Affairs, Webster said that the center has funding for specific projects from Bloomberg; the Abell, Annie E. Casey, and Joyce Foundations; and the Fund for Safer Futures. Other funding includes a grant from the Smart Family Foundation for doctoral dissertations.

The California Wellness Foundation continues to fund violence prevention efforts. According to its website, its “goal is to build resilience in diverse communities across the state so that all Californians have the opportunity to live in safe and healthy neighborhoods.” For example, the foundation awarded a two-year, $200,000 grant in 2016 to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence for a public education campaign on California’s Gun Violence Restraining Orders law. Also, the foundation began its Advance and Defend Wellness campaign in 2017, according to a July 2017 press release. This “focused response to threats to the well-being” of California immigrants and others includes a component on preventing hate-based violence.

In a 2011 Cal Wellness newsletter article, Frank Sotomayor noted that this funder launched its ten-year, $60 million Violence Prevention Initiative (VPI) in 1992. (Eight other foundations awarded an additional $10 million to the VPI.) The goal was “to help stem the gun violence that was killing” and injuring youth in California. Cal Wellness was “the nation’s first major philanthropic organization to embrace a public health model for violence prevention,” Sotomayor said. Over the years, this funder has awarded around $135 million for violence prevention efforts, a spokesperson told Health Affairs.

Grant Outcomes

In a February 2018 press release, the Paso del Norte Health Foundation (PDNHF) reported that, in partnership with the local YWCA and Health Advocates (a health training and research firm), it had developed the Me & You curriculum to prevent teen dating violence in middle and high schools. El Paso, Texas, where PDNHF is located, “has higher percentages of physical dating violence among youth than the national average,” the funder noted. PDNHF’s partners conducted a pilot test of more than 2,000 students and thirty-one teachers from schools that participated in the curriculum. One of the results was that after youth participated, they disagreed with the view “that girls sometimes deserve to be hit by the boys they date.”

Research partially funded by the Joyce Foundation and published in Injury Prevention found that “firearms training rarely includes suicide prevention,” according to Joyce’s February 6, 2018, research update. David Hemenway of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues looked at handgun safety classes in seven states. Citing the Annals of Internal Medicine, Joyce noted that “a large body of research finds that access to firearms is a risk factor for suicide.” In other news, Joyce’s gun violence prevention program now has an additional “focus on justice reform given its inextricable link to urban gun violence,” according to the funder’s website.

In November 2017 the City of Milwaukee (Wisconsin) released its Blueprint for Peace, “a comprehensive, community-driven agenda for addressing the complex factors that drive violence” there, according to a press release. Based on a public health approach to violence prevention, the blueprint, funded by the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment (AHW), “was shaped” by more than 1,500 people, including youth, other community residents, and key stakeholders, and called for action “to prevent violence, build resilience, and create a safer, healthier city,” the AHW’s January 2018 newsletter said. Tides and a federal initiative also contributed funding for the blueprint, developed with the Prevention Institute.

Cure Violence, a program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “stops the spread of violence by using the methods and strategies associated with disease control,” according to its website. Examples of these include changing social norms and identifying and treating people at the highest risk of perpetrating, or being a victim of, violence. Over the years, the program has received funding from a number of foundations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Chicago Community Trust, Michael Reese Health Trust, Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, and UBS Optimus Foundation. Among Cure Violence’s principles is that “health workers can use their influence to talk people out of violence,” said Gary Slutkin, founder and CEO, in a letter to the program’s friends that highlighted its progress during 2017. He noted that the Cure Violence approach was then being implemented in ten countries. Its model is being expanded to address domestic violence, ideologically inspired violence, and “violence in active conflict zones,” Slutkin said. Also, the program “participated in three congressional briefings on violence as a health issue.”

Funding from Cal Wellness “became the catalyst for a chain of developments that evolved into” California’s violence prevention movement, Sotomayor reported in his 2011 article. Julio Marcial, a former program director at Cal Wellness, states in the article that the funder “was in the vanguard and is part of the solution that led to a significant reduction in violent death and injury to youth” in California. The specific role of the foundation and its grantees “is, of course, impossible to measure because of the interplay of many variables,” Sotomayor noted.

Publications

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published “Public Policy Approaches to Violence Prevention: Proceedings of a Workshop—In Brief” in February 2018. This workshop aimed to illuminate “the ways in which violence prevention practitioners can effectively share their evidence-based research findings with policy makers” to “positively affect and amplify” these prevention efforts, according to an e-alert. Numerous funders, including the Archstone Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, Oak Foundation, and the RWJF provided partial support for the December 2016 workshop. Speakers included Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, who discussed how to engage policy makers; and Leana Wen, health commissioner of Baltimore, Maryland, who discussed violence prevention strategies being used in that city.

The Violence Policy Center (VPC) published The Relationship between Community Violence and Trauma: How Violence Affects Learning, Health, and Behavior, funded by Cal Wellness, in July 2017. The VPC is a national nonprofit “that conducts research and public education on violence in America” with the goal of informing and equipping advocates, journalists, policy makers, and the public. The report’s policy recommendations include continuing to raise awareness of the harmful effect of firearms in communities “beyond concerns related to lethality,” such as “increases in mental, physical, and behavioral health issues.”

Other Funders

Other foundations that have awarded grants in violence prevention include the Cigna Foundation, which made a $450,000 grant in 2017 to help address trauma among victims of violence in certain underserved sections of Chicago, Illinois; FISA Foundation, which funds in certain southwestern Pennsylvania counties and focuses its efforts on women, girls, and people with disabilities; the Heinz Endowments, which provided funding to the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Health Department to establish its Office of Violence Prevention in 2016; and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation, which has a Youth Violence Prevention Initiative that focuses on specific geographic areas.

Key Personnel Change

Julio Marcial

left the California Wellness Foundation in August 2017 after nineteen years there. He had been a program director managing violence prevention and other grant-making areas. Marcial is now director of the Youth Justice program at the Liberty Hill Foundation, in Los Angeles.

Compiled and written by Lee L. Prina, senior editor