Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #116329

Norman L. Kerr¹, Elena D. Quintana, PhD², Tim Metzger, MUPP³, and Gary Slutkin, MD³. (1) University of Illinios at Chicago, School of Public Health, Chicago Project for Violence Prevention/CeaseFire, 1603 W. Taylor, Chicago, IL 60612, 312 996-1150, nlkerr@uic.edu, (2) University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, 1603 W. Taylor (M/C 923), Chicago, IL 60612, (3) University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, Chicago Project for Violence Prevention/CeaseFire, 1603 W. Taylor, Chicago, IL 60612

In 1995, the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention began planning a public health strategy to increase neighborhood safety. The goals of this multi-pronged anti-violence intervention include decreasing shootings and killings, changing norms of violence in high crime neighborhoods, and creating positive opportunities for the highest risk individuals. Implementation of the plan requires collaboration and support by community groups, citizens, government, law enforcement, and clergy. The full implementation of this plan, called “CeaseFire”, began in 2000.

CeaseFire centers around five main interventions: 1) public education, changing “norms” 2) outreach to the highest-risk individuals 3) clergy led outreach, safe havens, and gang mediation 4) community responses to all shootings to show intolerance of violence 5) law enforcement responding promptly to shootings and maintaining a sustained presence.

In February 2000 CeaseFire implementation began. As a result in 2000 West Garfield Park (WGP) saw two periods of 90 days each with no shootings during the spring and summer of that year. This was previously unheard of in that community. WGP went on to see a 67% (from 43 to 14 ) reduction in shootings for 2000. Since that time the reduction has been maintained and subsequent reductions have been seen in at least 5 new CeaseFire implementation areas. During 2001 - 2003 the new CeaseFire communities experienced average decreases in shootings from 33-65%. In 2004, the seven communities fully implementing CeaseFire again averaged 48% reductions in shootings. In addition, the Logan Square community had a drop in homicides from 12 to 1 (92% reduction).

Learning Objectives:

• To understand how a public health strategy is implemented to reduce shootings and killings.
• To examine the essential components of the CeaseFire intervention

Keywords: Violence Prevention, Youth Violence

Related Web page: www.ceasefirechicago.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.