Lessons Learned From Community Wide Efforts to Prevent Youth Violence in the City of St Louis

Background/Purpose:

The City of St Louis has been engaged in multi-sector efforts to coordinate youth violence prevention (YVP) efforts over the past several years. These efforts include bringing together key sectors, identifying community wide and neighborhood specific needs, creating a YVP Partnership, and developing a regional YVP plan.

Methods:

During this process, the city has (a) generated and maintained support from key stakeholders in the city for this effort, (b) developed a Regional YVP Plan, (c), created the YVP Partnership, and (d) completed assessment activities to monitor and track progress in implementing the City-specific YVP plan.

Results/Outcomes:

Part of the success of these efforts involved the creation of a YVP Partnership and a Regional YVP Plan, both of which indicate widespread support for the initiative from multiple sectors and a thoughtful long-term approach to address a multi-faceted problem. Specifically, the regional YVP plan outlines a comprehensive, multi-tiered public health approach to preventing YV with primary, secondary, and tertiary prioritized strategies to prevent YV.  

Conclusions:

We will describe lessons learned during the last several years and how we plan to continue to make progress and strengthen our efforts to prevent YV in St Louis. Specifically, through participating in the Training and Technical Assistance YVP Initiative, we plan to receive supports that help us (a) develop a city-wide plan, (b) prioritize which strategies will be implemented and by whom, and (c) track progress in achieving short-and long-term goals and reducing community violence indicators.