Persistent community violence harms individual and collective well-being by eroding people’s sense of safety, worsening physical and mental health, undermining economic stability, and causing community-wide trauma. Community violence interventions (CVIs) are intended to prevent imminent violence at its source by intervening when harm is likely to occur. Informed by analysis of their local contexts, people involved in these interventions disrupt violence through direct interactions at multiple touchpoints: in the places affected by violence, with the people causing violence, and with the people victimized by violence. Local examples, including two from the Catalyst Grant Program, illustrate how innovative uses of data can help CVIs save lives and improve the quality of life for residents in communities affected by violence.
Community violence interventions take a public health approach to community violence, acknowledging the historical and systemic factors that contribute to it. They employ a range of evidence-based strategies, such as violence interruption through street outreach by credible messengers, hospital-based violence intervention, and focused deterrence.
These interventions are a promising approach for reducing community violence, but they are often underresourced and face challenges around data collection and management, access to resources, and coordination and collaboration between CVIs.
Creating Digital Tools to Support Coordination in a Community’s CVI Infrastructure
In a given community, numerous organizations may engage in the same CVI efforts independently. This approach can lead to overlapping efforts or services, gaps in other efforts or services, underresourcing as multiple interventions compete for funding, and confusion in communities about how to access CVI services. Increasingly, organizations have turned to technology and data innovations to streamline coordination and enhance data-sharing efforts across their CVI ecosystems.
In Cleveland, with support from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 4 capacity building program, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation's (LISC’s) Safety and Justice division and the Partnership for a Safer Cleveland (PSC) created a public data dashboard that leverages data and technology to improve public safety–related services through entities such as law enforcement, hospitals, community organizations, and local businesses. The Partnership for a Safer Cleveland is a trusted and honest intermediary in Cleveland’s public safety environment. For over 40 years, it has advocated a collaborative approach to community safety by connecting the public, policymakers, and police to advance safety. Through the Catalyst Grant Program, it designed and launched a user-friendly digital platform that serves as a centralized resource for Cleveland’s CVI network and broader community.
Informed by community partners, the platform provides CVI organizations with access to best practices, a calendar of events, and information on data sharing and spotlights community partners. It also allows community partners to upload resources, events, and data, encouraging proactive collaboration. Importantly, the platform was built to function in areas of the city with limited cellular signal and on mobile devices, which is critical given the nature of CVI work, which requires quick on-the-ground responses to violence where it occurs. Overall, by centralizing resources, improving coordination across organizations, and amplifying the voices of grassroot organizations, this platform helps overcome overlap in CVI efforts and increases the effectiveness of CVI organizations in Cleveland.
Leveraging Software to Support Data Management and Analysis
There is a lack of standardization (PDF) in how CVI organizations collect, manage, and share data. Though many organizations do collect and review their program data, they often do so inconsistently or are limited by constraints on time, technical expertise, funding, or access to data tools. Without reliable, community-level data, it becomes difficult to evaluate impact and scale successful models.
Through the Catalyst Grant Program, Tech Impact, a national leader in nonprofit technology, partnered with the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) unit of Delaware’s Department of Health and Social Services to develop three data tools to improve interagency data sharing and streamline data entry for case managers. Using Microsoft Power Apps, Power Automate, and Azure, case managers in the field can input data more easily and automate previously manual processes that had led to data-quality issues. The improved data-storage system also allows case managers to easily access client data. Though the broader impacts of these tools are still emerging, they have already improved GVI teams and agencies’ decisionmaking and helped them tailor services more effectively for GVI participants. The system should also facilitate data analysis and visualization to inform GVI’s programs, help it engage in continuous quality improvement, and help it maintain buy-in and support from the community, government leaders, and funders for its sustainability and program growth.
Technological Innovations Offer Solutions to Common CVI Challenges
Community violence interventions are critical for addressing community violence, and technology solutions offer solutions to challenges CVIs face while working with limited resources. Organizations doing CVI work can apply these solutions to improve internal processes and build tools to support collaboration across the CVI ecosystem.
Beyond technological solutions at the individual and program levels, CVI practitioners could consider developing shared infrastructure for the CVI field (PDF). This would allow organizations to align their terminology and practices, access helpful data, connect with partners and funders, and use resources more efficiently to better support the populations they serve.
