A Paradigm Shift to Interrupt the Bidirectional Flow Driving Community Violence

Community violence is a downstream consequence of root causes upstream, such as a lack of employment, income, opportunities for wealth building, education, access to healthy affordable food, and other determinants of health and thriving such as economically stable communities. EDs that are located in urban centers are exposed disproportionately to the unfortunate outcomes of community violence and thus have unique opportunities to intervene. But there is no formal curricular requirement for ED staff to learn about treating victims of community violence beyond treating their physical injuries.