Community Violence Intervention Leader Commends President Biden for Reinforcing a Comprehensive Approach to Ending the Pandemic of Gun Violence 

April 11, 2022—Today, Fatimah Loren Dreier, executive director of the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention (The HAVI), made the following remarks in support of the key moves by the White House to build a comprehensive approach to tackling the pandemic of gun violence plaguing our communities. 

"During this critical time when gun violence has traumatized generations, we commend President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for reinforcing their comprehensive approach to ending the pandemic of gun violence. Their moves today to nominate Steven M. Dettelbach to lead the ATF and to address the issue of ghost guns are consistent with and support a comprehensive approach to address this public health crisis.

“The President’s actions reinforce the building of an overall community violence intervention ecosystem that represents crucial components of cities' public health. For us to end this often "normalized," inhuman level of violence in our communities—HVIPs (Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs) are one key part of it, as are the frontline workers who intervene, prevent, and defuse potentially violent encounters. These components work together—and complement law enforcement—and when combined with economic opportunity, jobs, and access to healthcare and a good education, we create sustainable, healthy community ecosystems that attack violence at its roots. 

“We also commend the record level of funding by this administration and its commitment to provide several additional billions of dollars to support a comprehensive CVI ecosystem as well as their scaling up of their 16-jurisdiction CVI (Community Violence Intervention) collaborative designed to help communities examine the gaps within their CVI ecosystems and plug those gaps with resources and funding. 

“Solutions exist, it is our responsibility to embrace them, apply them, and create the healthy communities we want.” 

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