HAVI Policy Director Testifies Before the House Judiciary Committee on the Community Improving Impact of HVIPs

Community violence intervention is a proven public safety strategy that saves lives, strengthens communities, and reduces repeat violence.

As part of Gun Violence Awareness Month, The HAVI Policy Director Dr. Kyle Fischer testified before the House Judiciary Committee, highlighting the growing body of evidence behind hospital-based and community violence intervention programs. His testimony underscored what communities across the country already know: when we invest in trusted messengers, trauma-informed care, and coordinated community partnerships, we create safer neighborhoods and better outcomes.

Thank you to the Committee for the opportunity to discuss the importance of sustaining and expanding evidence-based solutions that prevent violence before it happens.

Prepared Remarks:

Opening Remarks to House Judiciary Committee

Kyle Fischer, MD, MPH

Good morning. Thank you, Ranking Member McBath and Members of the House Judiciary Committee for the opportunity to speak today on this critically important issue. My name is Kyle Fischer. I am an emergency physician at the University of Maryland where I see patients in Baltimore and am the Policy Director at the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention. The HAVI is the only national organization that fosters a network of hospital-based violence intervention programs, which help victims of community violence heal and break the cycle of violence. We represent 78 member programs across the country.

Hospital-based violence intervention programs are multidisciplinary strategies that combine the efforts of medical staff with trusted community-based partners to provide trauma-informed care, safety planning, and services to violently injured people. We recognize this moment as a golden opportunity to intervene. Just like smokers are often motivated to quit after a heart attack, violently injured patients are often highly motivated to transform their lives in these critical moments. Our approach deploys violence prevention professionals to make this happen. These individuals are credible messengers who are recruited from the communities they serve, often have a personal history of injury themselves, and have recovered to the stage that they can walk patients through their recovery.

Our programs intensively work with patients in the months after their injuries to promote a full physical, psychological, and social recovery. We use a team-based model with doctors, social workers, case managers, mental health providers, and community partners. The research shows this approach works. The first randomized controlled trial was published 20 years ago from my home institution, UMD Shock Trauma. It found that without intervention, 1 out of 3 patients were hospitalized for repeat injuries. For those in the HVIP, it substantially decreased to 1 out of 20. On top of this, participation increased employment and decreased incarceration. These results were replicated in a recent long-term evaluation of our program at Boston Medical Center, which found that patients engaged in the VIP cut their risk of repeat injury in half.

Importantly, HVIPs are only one form of community violence intervention. Street Outreach programs provide similar services as well as community-based de-escalation to interrupt violence in the moments before they occur. Transformational Mental Health Strategies such as those deployed by Chicago Readi, Chicago CRED, and Roca Inc utilize cognitive behavioral interventions to enhance participants’ emotional and behavioral responses to potentially violent situations. Peace Fellowships enroll high-risk participants in 1-2 year experiences that include mentoring, community supports and services, peer fellowship, and modest stipends.

These strategies all contain critical key components:

  • They focus like a laser on those at the highest risk of violence

  • Deploy credible messengers as frontline providers

  • Address issues of trauma and post-traumatic stress

  • Reduce risk factors for reinjury and cultivate protective factors

  • Work upstream to address the social drivers of health through jobs, education, and individualized client needs

In Baltimore, we have gone all-in on creating a community violence intervention ecosystem. Both my experience and the data show this strategy works. The city has embraced an “all of the above” approach by deploying a network of HVIPs, street outreach programs, intensive engagement and cognitive behavioral interventions, modernized law enforcement-community partnership strategies, and coordinating all these efforts through a dedicated Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. The result is that 2025 saw the lowest number of homicides in 50 years.

So, we know that community violence intervention works. What can Congress do about it? First, we must recognize that this is a bipartisan approach. Since an initial investment of $250 million as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Members on both sides of the aisle have funded the CVIPI program every year in the annual appropriations process. Congress should both continue, and increase, this annual appropriation. Separately, the Break the Cycle of Violence Act, introduced by Representative Horsford, would fully fund CVI activities across the country. Finally, states are increasingly utilizing Medicaid to support the work of frontline CVI providers. Congress should codify the current CMS reimbursement pathways into law and provide resources to programs and states to make it easier for CVI programs to access.

Thank you for your time and attention. I’m happy to answer any questions.