Cure Violence
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| Founded | 2000 |
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| Founder | Dr. Gary Slutkin |
| Focus | Health Approach to Violence Prevention |
| Location |
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Area served
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US/International |
| Method | Detecting & Interrupting Conflicts, Identifying & Treating High Risk Individuals and Changing Social Norms |
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Key people
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Brent Decker, Chief Program Officer |
| Mission | To reduce violence globally using disease control and behavior change methods. |
| Website | http://www.cureviolence.org |
Cure Violence, founded by University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health Epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, M.D. and ranked one of the top twenty NGOs by the Global Journal in 2015, is a public health anti-violence program. It aims to stop the spread of violence in communities by using the methods and strategies associated with disease control – detecting and interrupting conflicts, identifying and treating the highest risk individuals, and changing social norms.
Originally developed under the name "CeaseFire" in 2000, Slutkin launched the model in West Garfield, the most violent community in Chicago at the time. CeaseFire produced a 67 percent reduction in shootings in its first year. However, a three-year review by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2009 found that it reduced shootings from 16 percent to 34 percent and eliminated retaliatory murders resulting from increased use of public education slogans — such as “Don’t shoot. I want to grow up.” — and conflict mediation and community mobilization.
CeaseFire received additional funding from the State of Illinois in 2004 to immediately expand from 5 to 15 communities and from 20 to 80 Outreach Workers. That year, homicides declined in Chicago by 25 percent, to a total of 448, a rate of 15.5 homicides per 100,000 residents
Since 2005, the organization has been providing a hospital-based violence prevention response to violently injured patients from the south and southwest side of Chicago at the Advocate Christ Medical Center. The success of the Advocate Christ program led, in 2011, to the creation of a second hospital-based violence prevention program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, a level-1 trauma center that treats approximately 1,000 trauma patients annually. As of March, 2016 CeaseFire Illinois operates four hospital response programs, with the third program at Cook County's John Stroger, Jr. Hospital and the fourth at Mt. Sinai Medical Center.
CeaseFire was reorganized and changed its name to Cure Violence in September 2012. Cure Violence now refers to the larger organization and overall health approach, while local program partner sites often operate under other names. CeaseFire Illinois now operates the Chicago program sites using the Cure Violence model. In December, 2015, Cure Violence has 23 cities implementing the Cure Violence health approach in over 50 sites in the U.S. International program partner sites are operating in Trinidad, Honduras, Mexico, South Africa, Canada and Colombia.
Cure Violence's founder and executive director, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for ten years battled infectious diseases in Africa. He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, thus the treatment ought to follow the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source.
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Wikipedia