UNITY Roadmap for urban youth violence prevention: Developing city methodology and policy to support effective violence prevention strategies

Despite efforts by residents and elected officials, cities across the country still grapple with violence. Violence is among the biggest health threats affecting communities today, yet it can be prevented. Its prevention requires an approach that builds on a combination of community and systemic action along with a focus on family and individual resiliency.

The UNITY Roadmap is a tool to help cities strategically assess infrastructure and systems needs and design effective and sustainable youth violence prevention methodologies. It delineates the essential elements of a citywide strategy; they are: political support, policies and plans, organizational structure, resources, evaluation and research, community engagement, communication, prevention programming, and capacity/skills. This presentation will detail the importance of each of these nine elements and describe the Roadmap's application for cities.

The Roadmap is a project of UNITY (Urban Networks to Increase Thriving Youth through violence prevention). UNITY is a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and supplemental funders designed to support urban youth violence prevention efforts and improve the lives of young people in cities around the country. In addition to development of the Roadmap, UNITY's activities include conducting assessments of what infrastructure and programs cities already have in place, shaping a national strategy to curb youth violence, and offering training and technical assistance to cities to support local efforts. In addition, the initiative brings together representatives of the nation's 45 largest cities as well as national violence prevention advocates and leaders and youth as part of a National Consortium.