# Empowering Youth to Realize Equity and Prevent Violence: Youth Violence Prevention Center-Denver

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO · 2023 · $1,199,927

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Youth violence remains a significant public health challenge for structurally marginalized
communities across the nation. The Youth Violence Prevention Center-Denver (YVPC-D) brings
together a multidisciplinary team of researchers, practitioners, community partners, and youth
leaders to advance the science and practice of violence prevention by building the evidence
base for community-led violence prevention strategies that mitigate the social and structural
conditions influencing rates of violence. This project uses a youth-community-university
partnership to build an infrastructure for violence prevention in two high-burden communities in
Denver, Northeast Park Hill and Far Northeast Denver. The YVPC-D activities include: (1)
Collaborating with youth and community partners to develop, implement, and evaluate three
innovative violence prevention strategies (e.g., The Power of One for Youth Engagement
Initiative, Violence Prevention and Interruption through Bystander Reporting and Social Media
Monitoring, and Enhancing Youth Athletics and Career Development Programs); (3) Conducting
a process evaluation of the three strategies to support capacity building, assess change
mechanisms, and monitor implementation; (4) Conduct a formative evaluation on all three
strategies and a quasi-experimental evaluation on two of the strategies; (5) Use an interrupted
time series and a Difference in Difference design to examine the impacts of the combined
interventions on rates of youth violence. Additionally, the YVPC-D will recruit and train youth
from the intervention communities and underrepresented groups as respected and culturally
competent collaborators through a Youth Advisory Council and an early career and junior
researcher program. This project will build the scientific base by advancing our understanding of
innovative strategies for universal, selective, and indicated prevention of youth violence.
Additionally, this project seeks to challenge the current singular practice paradigm of prescribing
evidence-based programs in high-burden neighborhoods to create a collaborative, practical, and
culturally informed paradigm for violence prevention. A protocol will be developed that can guide
future youth-community-university partnerships and projects. Success will be measured by
reductions in rates of youth violence, increases in prosocial opportunities, and sustainable
improvements in public health practices.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10642729
- **Project number:** 5U01CE003377-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
- **Principal Investigator:** Beverly E. Kingston
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $1,199,927
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-09-30 → 2026-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10642729

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10642729, Empowering Youth to Realize Equity and Prevent Violence: Youth Violence Prevention Center-Denver (5U01CE003377-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10642729. Licensed CC0.

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