Last Updated: October 15, 2024
RHHD’s Community Health Assessment (CHA) revealed three major areas where residents saw big health challenges:
- Community Safety and Violence Prevention
- Chronic Disease
- Mental Health, including Substance Use Disorder
Today, we’re focusing on Community Safety and Violence Prevention. RHHD Violence Prevention Coordinator Lorraine Wright explains a bit about what these terms mean and why a health department needs to focus on them:
Safety and violence are broad public health issues.
During the summer of 2024, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared firearm violence a public health crisis in America. Firearm violence impacts public health because it causes injury and death and because it can impact the mental health and well-being of entire families, neighborhoods, and communities.
“If we look at violence from a public health lens, it’s a way to do our communities the best service,” Lorraine explains. “The CHA helps us focus on violence that’s happening in so many ways. When we talk about firearm injury and death, that’s not all of it.”
342 survey respondents—or approximately 28%–reported that they or family members had been impacted by violence. These instances of violence included firearm injury, domestic violence, physical fights, breaking and entering, and mental or verbal violence.
Community violence does not impact us all equally.
Lorraine says that RHHD teams reached out to communities across Richmond and Henrico to fill out the CHA. As a result, we can see that some neighborhoods have experienced more violence. “Violence is often happening where poverty is the highest, where the resources are the lowest. People are providing an honest perception of what’s happening in their lives.” Because public health cares about population level well-being, we want to make sure that all residents have the opportunity to live safely in our communities!
Together, we can work on solutions.
Lorraine says that the CHA “helps us to maintain focus on the most important issues.” And because it focuses on community voices, it reminds us that we need to develop solutions together. “We need to build resilient communities that understand how to resolve conflict, how to ask for help when they need it, how to rely on each other.” Lorraine says. “If we can put our heads together, that’s when the magic happens.”
If you want to “co-create” these next steps, join our Violence Prevention and Community Safety steering committee! Just fill out this interest form.
Teach it back
- Why is Violence Prevention and Community Safety a priority area in the RHHD Community Health Assessment?
- How do you define violence? Why don’t all residents experience violence equally?
- What is the next step you can take to help RHHD address Violence Prevention and Community Safety?
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