Sponsor’s Perspective: Building a Roadmap of Comprehensive Community Violence Intervention Evaluation Practices

Each year in the United States, an average of 19 050 people die by firearm homicide and another 35 451 are wounded in assault-related shootings.^1,2 This crisis is not felt equally across demographic groups. Generations of systemic inequities, ³ discrimination, ⁴ and disinvestment ⁵ have exacerbated firearm violence in a way that disproportionately impacts Black and Latinx Americans in particular, leaving them 12 and 2 times more likely to die by firearm homicides than their white peers, respectively. ¹ Law enforcement is often treated as the de facto response to this public health problem, despite the underlying social determinants of health that contribute to firearm violence ⁶ and the harms caused by criminal legal system contact. ⁷ Yet, for decades, another less widely recognized option has existed as well: one that we now refer to as Community Violence Intervention (CVI).

CVI offers an evidence-informed public health approach to firearm violence prevention, typically by identifying those at the highest risk and providing them with the specific community-based resources necessary to address its root causes. ⁸ While CVI’s origins extend back to at least the mid-1990s, public support and funding for it grew exponentially following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and George Floyd’s murder in 2020, which called attention to the importance of alternative public safety strategies. ⁹ Today, nearly every major city—and many smaller ones and rural communities as well—has at least one CVI program in operation. ¹⁰

Both practitioners and researchers have mobilized quickly to support the recent proliferation and formalization of CVI. In so doing, the field has faced several challenges common amongst early-stage community programs and evaluations, including inconsistent funding, implementation variations, data sensitivities, and specialized personnel needs. From a research perspective, this has translated into: (1) a wide range of rigor in evidence generated across a variety of publication outlets^11,12; (2) numerous operational definitions for key models and constructs; and (3) mixed results, with a “black-box” as to when and why variations occur. None of these challenges are surprising in light of the field’s relatively early stage. However, given the gravity of firearm violence in this country, addressing them urgently and efficiently is of the utmost importance. At this pivotal moment for the field, this INQUIRY Special Collection aims to set researchers on the path to do just that.

Everytown for Gun Safety, the United States’ largest firearm violence prevention organization, sponsored this INQUIRY Special Collection as part of its broader mission to end firearm violence through education, action, and movement-building. Everytown Research specifically is dedicated to conducting and uplifting independent, methodologically rigorous studies that inform evidence-based policies and programs. CVI represents a rapidly evolving, promising strategy, and strengthening the science behind it is essential to realizing its potential. By supporting this collection—expertly edited by Dr. Jeffrey Butts and Dr. Caterina Roman—Everytown seeks to help build a more robust CVI evidence-base that can guide practitioners, policymakers, and communities in implementing effective, equitable approaches to preventing firearm violence.

Taken together, the 9 articles in this Special Collection provide a comprehensive portrait of the current state of CVI research. The collection spans systematic and scoping reviews, implementation and process studies, and community-centered qualitative work to clarify what is known about CVI’s effectiveness, how programs are conceptualized and operationalized, and under what conditions they are most likely to succeed. Across these studies, the researchers confront the mixed evidence base surrounding CVI by exploring sources of variation in outcomes, surfacing common challenges in implementation and evaluation, and proposing shared frameworks and metrics that can anchor future work.

This Collection advances the field in 3 critical ways. First, the featured articles synthesize existing evidence and models, offering clearer definitions and typologies of CVI strategies. Second, they identify key processes such as outreach, engagement, service dosage, and program pathways, which must be measured to move beyond “black box” evaluations and understand how CVI drives violence reductions. Third, they center community and structural conditions, emphasizing the importance of asset-based measures, collaborative inquiry, and attention to structural violence in CVI research efforts. In doing so, this Special Collection marks significant progress in the field and lays the groundwork for a rigorous, transparent, and equity-focused CVI research agenda. For these reasons, Everytown is honored to support this mission-critical work, and eager to see its integration into future research and practice.