Gun violence can be reduced with public health techniques | Opinion
In Philadelphia, where the Focused Deterrence approach was piloted to positive effect, funding has stayed flat, the program has not expanded, and gun violence is again on the rise.
This summer, U.S. cities have experienced unconscionable spikes in gun violence.
Just this past weekend, 12 people were shot, one fatally, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and a mass shooting in Gilroy, Calif., left three dead. In early June, Chicago witnessed 52 shootings during a single weekend, including 10 fatalities. In Washington, 19 people were shot in five days, including 11-year-old Karon Brown, killed on the way to football practice. Nine people were shot during one eight-hour period in Baltimore this month. In Boston, which sees lower levels of gun violence than most major U.S. cities, at least 19 people have been shot since July 3, and the city’s nonfatal gun injuries have risen by nearly 20% since 2018.
After the spate of Boston shootings, Mayor Marty Walsh touted the state’s strong gun laws even as he lamented the city’s levels of violence: “You still have a weekend like this. And it makes you think, God, what more can you do? But there has to be more.”
There is.
To truly address gun violence, we must view it through a public health lens — one that reframes the issue as a preventable disease that can be cured with the help of community members.
This approach is effective. Cure Violence, for example, a Chicago-based NGO, uses a public health perspective to help cities worldwide reduce their gun violence levels. Under its model, outbreaks of violent behavior are responded to with three common epidemic-control methods: interrupting transmission, containing the risk, and changing community norms. Cities that have applied these methods have seen as much as 73% drops in shootings and killings.
What would this approach look like writ large?
First, American cities will need to invest more resources in evidence-based conflict diffusion. In the 1990s, Boston launched Operation Ceasefire, a “focused deterrence” model developed by David Kennedy at the Harvard Kennedy School that advocated for direct communications between police, gang members, clergy, and other community members, leading to a 63% reduction in youth homicides. This intervention model has since been adopted in American cities like Oakland to great effect. In his new book, “Bleeding Out,” researcher and Harvard Kennedy fellow Thomas Abt concludes that “focused deterrence had the strongest and most consistent antiviolence effects.”
Yet such prevention efforts in American cities are poorly and sporadically funded. A dearth of federal research dollars for violence prevention has slowed progress in implementing prevention programs, in part owing to a lack of big data.
Still, we are starting to see more cities and states invest major dollars in prevention programs. Where investments in focused deterrence have continued and grown, gains have lasted. In Oakland, for example, the number of gun deaths has been halved since 2012. But in Philadelphia, where the Focused Deterrence approach was piloted to positive effect, funding has stayed flat, the program has not expanded, and gun violence is again on the rise. Proven interventions should be maintained and expanded, which can ultimately save taxpayers money on expensive medical care and incarceration.
Individual residents concerned about gun violence — which should be all of us — also can support local organizations that work with their city’s highest-risk residents. In Boston, for example, InnerCity Weightlifting partners with some of the city’s most at-risk boys and men. My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, an initiative founded by President Obama, provides mentorship to high-risk boys of color, while Operation LIPSTICK works with women in high-crime areas to help them avoid the trap of straw gun purchasing.
Finally, we should all work to change community norms around gun violence. Most shooting victims in our cities live in poverty and are people of color; such inequities make it easier for other residents to minimize their own threat and for media outlets to deprioritize coverage.
Psychological distance from these shootings does not lessen our responsibility to act. All concerned residents should fight misrepresentations of gun violence victims and perpetrators, including in the media, and learn more about the social injustices at the root of our cycles of violence. One resource is the Healing Hurt People initiative, developed in part by former Boston City Hospital physician John Rich, which harnesses digital storytelling to let survivors tell their stories in their own words.
As public health educators and researchers, we believe there is no disease we cannot cure, gun violence included. But no epidemic can be eradicated without the efforts of a village. One’s own sense of safety should never lead to complacency when it comes to shootings in our cities.
Michelle A. Williams is dean of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Mary T. Bassett is director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and former commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. A version of this piece first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.