Special Collection in INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing

Special Collection on Community-Led Strategies to Reduce Gun Violence: Developing Evidence for Policy and Practice

Introductory Editorial
Guest Editors, Jeffrey A. Butts and Caterina G. Roman

Excerpt

Efforts to address social problems may be categorized as primary prevention to impede the initial occurrence of problems, secondary prevention to reduce the severity and escalation of problems as they emerge, and tertiary intervention to apply consequences and remediations for fully developed problems. Research on violence reduction thus far has largely focused on secondary prevention and tertiary intervention.2,3 Secondary prevention programs managed by social services and law enforcement work with individuals at risk of but not deeply involved in violence. Tertiary interventions are the primary business of bureaucracies comprising the criminal justice system, including law enforcement, courts, community supervision agencies, and correctional facilities.

Efforts to strengthen primary and secondary prevention of violence in the U.S. benefited significantly from increased federal funding after 2020. Researchers were involved in multiple efforts to evaluate various CVI initiatives.4 In 2024, however, a national election in the U.S. produced dramatically different legislative and executive branches of the government. Newly empowered officials immediately canceled most CVI funding, including numerous research projects already underway. More than $100 million was eliminated from the resources available for CVI programs across the country.5 The timing was unfortunate. Research on CVI was just beginning to show results. The funding setback delayed the emergence of much-needed evidence about the value and cost-effectiveness of community-led programs to reduce violence.

… Building the CVI evidence base for the future will require theoretically informed, intentionally causal evaluation studies. The first task in designing such evaluations is to articulate a research-oriented theory of change. How do program developers describe the operational theory behind CVI? Is it supported by previous research and scientific literature? Are evaluation designs properly aligned with program goals and operations? Both process and impact evaluations must complement one another and identify how intended changes occur. Research must identify which program components are most successful. When studies can isolate the effects of the multiple components of a complex program strategy and compare results across individuals or geographic areas, evaluation researchers can begin to pinpoint the key components of CVI. Are some specific components responsible for the changes attributed to an entire strategy? What is the minimum number of components needed to effect change? Could future efforts be effective using only a subset of known components?

… The field of community violence reduction continues to face an urgent need for credible, policy-relevant research. In a politicized research environment where studies are conducted by investigators competing for funding, with funding organizations competing for attention and influence, the existing body of evidence is not determined by policy relevance, theoretical salience, or methodological rigor. Programs providing individual-level interventions enjoy a head start. Achieving measurable outcomes and demonstrating program effects is typically easier, quicker, and cheaper when a program is designed to change individual behavior rather than to adjust social norms or improve community conditions.

Contributors to the Inquiry Special Collection focused on these issues to advance the development of research evidence for community violence prevention.

Jordan Costa, Soledad Adrianzén McGrath, and Paul Carrillo
Defining CVI: A Critical Review of Current Conceptualizations and Their Implications for Policy, Research and Practice

Virginia McCarthy et al.
Research By Us, For Us: Violence Prevention Professional Researchers Lead Measure Development for HVIPs