# VCU Healthy Communities for Youth: Evaluation of Violence Prevention Strategies to Prevent and Reduce Community Levels of Youth Violence

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $1,198,548

## Abstract

Abstract
The goal of this project is to support a National Center of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention to implement
and evaluate a comprehensive prevention strategy to reduce and prevent community rates of youth violence in
Richmond, Virginia and similar communities across the United States. The project’s specific objectives are: (1)
To implement a comprehensive approach to youth violence prevention at the community-level with the following
violence prevention strategies: (a) two complementary participatory action research prevention strategies
including Youth Voices, a culturally responsive curriculum for African American adolescents, and the SEED
Method, an evidenced-based process where youth and adults join together to identify strategies and develop
an action plan to address social and structural conditions that create inequities in positive youth development
opportunities, (b) a hospital-based prevention strategy, Emerging Leaders, that offers a brief hospital-based
violence intervention followed by 6-months of wrap-around community case management, a firearm safety
counseling program, and a psychoeducational workshop series for youth who have experienced an intentional
or violence-related injury, and (c) stakeholder education strategies to build funding and resource capacity for
youth-serving grassroots organizations through workshops and technical assistance in grant-writing, to expand
the Walker-Talker community engagement model to increase community members’ knowledge of and access to
positive youth development opportunities, and to offer evidenced-based workshops for organizations to promote
youths’ developmental assets; (2) To evaluate the community-level impact of this comprehensive approach
through continuous collection of surveillance data on community-level indicators of youth violence exposure
using a multiple baseline design in three economically disadvantaged communities; (3) To evaluate the
effectiveness of each prevention strategy with this comprehensive approach by assessing their impact on
specific risk and protective factors they address; (4) To develop a Youth Advisory Council that will be actively
involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of the prevention strategies, and (5) To mentor and
provide training to doctoral-level students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty in the area of youth violence
prevention. The project focuses on three economically disadvantaged communities in the City of Richmond,
Virginia that were selected based on community input and review of surveillance data indicating high rates of
community youth violence. Youth homicide accounted for the majority of all homicides and intentional injury
deaths (96%) between 1999 and 2019 (CDC-WISQARS) – a rate that is nearly two times to 10.5 times greater
than the national average (CDC-WISQARS, 2020). Violence in Richmond disproportionately impacts African
American youth, and 92% of all youth who died from intentional and violence-relate...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10396332
- **Project number:** 1U01CE003379-01
- **Recipient organization:** VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Terri N Sullivan
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $1,198,548
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-30 → 2026-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10396332

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10396332, VCU Healthy Communities for Youth: Evaluation of Violence Prevention Strategies to Prevent and Reduce Community Levels of Youth Violence (1U01CE003379-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10396332. Licensed CC0.

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