Richmond, Virginia, Gun Violence Prevention Framework

The City of Richmond, Virginia, is a mid-sized city with an outsized problem: intentional injury due to violence among its young people is disproportionate to its population and again on the rise.  The historical and societal causes for this violence are multi-layered and complex, but the sheer numbers are straightforward and speak to the need for meaningful change.  Richmond leads Virginia’s 38 independent cities in the total number of gun-related homicides per year and ranks second among all Virginia localities in gun-related homicides per capita. Due to gun-related non-fatal injuries in Richmond, hospitalizations were double that of the surrounding counties. Therefore, Richmond needs a unique, evidence-based approach to reducing intentional injury due to violence that considers its specific legacy of disparity and the ongoing impacts to social determinants of health that continue into the modern era.

Richmond can no longer afford to go on with business as usual; lives are lost at a rapid rate daily. Adapted to address the City's greatest risk factors, Richmond's GVP framework components are evidence-based and have demonstrated success at the state and federal levels. The proposed Richmond GVP model aligns these strategies with additional interventions to support Richmond's current violence prevention strategies. This proposal is requesting funds for hospital-based crisis intervention for families, friends, and survivors of violence, intensive case management for survivors of gun violence, to establish a data-sharing network to share information amongst law enforcement, health systems, social service providers, and other community partners, and evaluation and quality assurance to maintain the efficacy of the framework.