HAVI to Host Nation’s Largest Conference on Community Violence Intervention
October 12, 2022—Amid soaring rates of gun violence and homicide in the United States—which in 2021 reached the highest levels in three decades—the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention (the HAVI) will bring together hundreds of advocates from across the movement to end community violence to drill down on strategies for building and expanding community violence intervention (CVI) ecosystems in cities across the country to address the plague of gun violence.
From November 1-3, the HAVI—a national organization that supports over 85 cities working to implement and sustain hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) and serves as a training and technical assistance provider for the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative (CVIC)—will convene hundreds of medical professionals, frontline violence intervention workers, researchers, policy experts, philanthropists, and government leaders for its 12th annual conference—the largest gathering of its kind—with the theme, Going Further, Together: Building the CVI Ecosystem. The conference, which will be held virtually this year, will center the movement to align violence prevention efforts across government, community-based organizations, and health care systems to maximize impact and end gun violence.
“We are in a moment of unprecedented energy and momentum within our movement, and the HAVI conference will serve as an incubator for the brilliant ideas and powerful work being done across the country to address violence at its roots and heal the trauma it inflicts on far too many communities,” said Fatimah Loren Dreier, Executive Director of the HAVI. “This year’s conference will highlight our growing movement to address gun violence with an all-hands-on-deck approach—an approach that includes leaders from a diverse range of fields, from medicine to philanthropy, who understand that everyone has a role to play in ending this devastating crisis.”
The 2022 HAVI conference will feature high-profile speakers from across the movement to end gun violence, including philanthropist Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, founder of USAFacts, and chairman of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. Last February, Ballmer Group—a philanthropic organization co-founded by Steve and Connie Ballmer—announced an $18 million gift to the HAVI and three other national organizations to support their collaborative work to address the gun violence crisis that disproportionately impacts young men of color in cities across the United States. Another keynote speaker will be Arthur C. Evans, Jr., PhD, CEO of the American Psychological Association, which promotes and disseminates psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve lives. Evans previously served for 12 years as commissioner of Philadelphia's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services and has held faculty appointments at the medical schools at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania.
This year’s conference will spotlight the grassroots movement-building, effective collaboration, and innovative partnerships happening nationwide in cities such as Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, and Newark, N.J., as a growing number of communities recognize the value in building comprehensive community violence intervention ecosystems.
“The conference will reflect the direction of our movement—away from siloed programs and toward a coordinated, comprehensive approach to violence prevention that includes everyone working to address gun violence—from governments to community organizations to hospitals and philanthropy. The time is now to come together to strengthen our movement toward safety, equity, and justice, and we can achieve this by going further, together,” said Adrian Sanchez, the HAVI’s Director of Peer Learning.
The 2022 conference will feature thought-provoking panel discussions and workshops on public health approaches to violence, racial equity, public policies to support community violence intervention, and more. It will include trainings for violence intervention specialists; workshops on the intersection of violence, trauma, and community; discussions on women on the frontline; and best practices workshops designed to help leaders from across the movement to build effective, comprehensive CVI ecosystems that have the power to end violence.
HAVI conference registration is free for journalists. For more details or media inquiries, please contact us.