# Changing the Narrative:  Using Media to Shift Social Norms of Violence Among Youth in West Louisville

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE · 2020 · $1,200,000

## Abstract

PROJECT ABSTRACT
Youth violence is a serious public health issue, particularly in the disproportionate burden upon economically
disadvantaged, inner city, and minority populations. Intentional injury is the leading cause of death among
persons 10 to 24 years of age in Kentucky, and the second leading cause of death for this age group nationally.
Alarmingly, Kentucky’s homicide rate for this same age group is 10 times higher for Black males
(38.7/100,000) than for White males (3.9/100,000). In Louisville, KY, substantial social and health
disparities—including violence and related risk factors—are concentrated in West Louisville (WL), an
economically disadvantaged, urban, primarily Black community. Led by the School of Public Health &
Information Sciences (SPHIS), researchers at the University of Louisville (UofL) propose to establish the UofL
Youth Violence Prevention Center, partnering with researchers from Vanderbilt University. The specific aims
of the proposed center include:
 1. Strengthen the infrastructure to support youth violence prevention research and practice at the
 University of Louisville.
 2. Develop, implement and evaluate a community-level social norming campaign to change the norms of
 violence among youth in West Louisville using mass and social media.
 3. Document the development and implementation of the social norming campaign to improve replication
 and scalability in other settings or communities.
 4. Evaluate the relationship between community readiness, community capacity, and the implementation
 of the community-level social norming campaign.
 5. Disseminate study findings in meaningful and actionable format to a variety of relevant audiences (i.e.,
 community, local organizations and leaders, youth violence prevention researchers and practitioners,
 academic peers, and policy-makers).
The interdisciplinary research team proposes a quasi-experimental design to examine the effectiveness of using
a community-level 3-year social norming campaign utilizing new media to change norms of violence among
youth 10-24 and introduce prosocial norms driven by cultural identity, with WL as the intervention community
and East Nashville, TN as the control community. The researchers and a team of community collaborators will
with a professional advertising agency to plan and design the campaign, which will be deployed in Year 2.
Surveys and interviews will capture data measuring our dependent variables of social norms and violent
behavior (independent variables: campaign exposure by media type, demographics), and population-level
youth violence data from schools, emergency departments, and local police departments will offer measures of
change in serious youth violence at the population level.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10150171
- **Project number:** 3U01CE002711-05S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
- **Principal Investigator:** Aishia A Brown
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1,200,000
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2015-09-30 → 2021-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10150171

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10150171, Changing the Narrative:  Using Media to Shift Social Norms of Violence Among Youth in West Louisville (3U01CE002711-05S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10150171. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*