How can we help alleviate violence in our communities?
Rising levels of violence, particularly among youth and young adults, are heavily impacting communities across the country. Healthy Cleveland Violence Committee member, Vino Sundaram, recently presented youth violence data by neighborhood and political ward to a national audience at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists annual national conference in Anchorage, Alaska. The poster was nominated for a Best Poster award at the conference.
The investigators examined youth violence data from 2013 to gain a better understanding of how youth violence affects specific neighborhoods and political wards in Cleveland, OH. Youth violence data was taken from the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court and organized through Case Western Reserve University. Youth violence rates are defined as the number of offenses divided by the teen population, aged 10-17, per 1,000 people. Along with examining the violence data, investigators also looked at the state of the youth in those neighborhoods most impacted by violence. Two factors of particular interest were poverty and lead poisoning. The findings from this research will be used to support a public health model, and provide guidance on where to prioritize efforts in the city. The Cleveland Collaborative on Youth Violence Prevention (CCYVP), also known as the Cleveland Plan, has four main goals; one of these goals is to use a public health model to support a data-driven, community-based violence intervention strategy. Vino is an epidemiologist with the Cleveland Department of Public Health. For more information, or a PDF version of the poster, please contact her at vsundaram@city.cleveland.oh.us