Search Results (246)

Youth violence, particularly gun-related, is a pressing public health concern influenced by key risk factors and broader structural inequities that shape community conditions. The ThrYve (“Together Helping Reduce Youth Violence”) initiative, a multisector, multilevel community strategy in Kansas City, targeted social and structural determinants of youth violence. Guided by the Institute of Medicine’s Model for Collaborative Action in Communities, the ThrYve approach supported five evidence-informed components including: (1) coalition development with over 40 partners; (2) youth violence prevention programs in hospitals, schools, and the community; (3) out-of-school time supports for youths; (4) education, college, and career readiness initiatives; and (5) youth/family navigation supports. A mixed-method, quasi-experimental design examined pre/post changes in youth risk and behavior, longitudinal youth homicide trends, and documented coalition-facilitated community and systems changes. Between 2018 and 2024, the ThrYve coalition implemented 243 new or modified programs, policies, and practices promoting safer, supportive community environments. During the intervention phase, youth homicide rates in the intervention catchment area declined by 42.3% from baseline, and significant within-group improvements were observed in selected risk factors among ThrYve participants. Findings suggest the value of coalition-based, systems-level, community- and youth-engaged strategies for youth violence prevention. Full article

During adolescence, exposure to community violence (ECV) can negatively impact multiple facets of health and future achievement. Existing research mainly focuses on the risk factors that increase ECV, although multiple promotive factors are associated with lower levels of ECV. However, research has not examined the unique and combined effects of these promotive factors on ECV. The current study investigates promotive factors at the individual, peer, and supportive adult relationship levels for their unique and combined associations with ECV to determine which factors are associated with the lowest levels of ECV. 2725 adolescents from three urban middle schools (M_age = 13.22; 48% male; 90% Black, 18% Hispanic or Latino) reported measures of ECV, positive outlook, self-efficacy for nonviolence, peers’ prosocial behavior, friends’ support for nonviolence, presence of a caring adult, and parental support for nonviolence. Regression analyses showed that a combination of multiple promotive factors better explained the variance in ECV than any single promotive factor alone, indicating that promotive factors have compounding effects. Positive outlook, self-efficacy for nonviolence, friends’ support for nonviolence, and the presence of a caring adult were all uniquely associated with lower levels of exposure to community violence across all steps of the hierarchical regression. In alignment with positive youth development theory, these results demonstrate that an adolescent’s ECV risk is lower if they have more promotive factors. These findings emphasize the importance of relational promotive factors as future targets for strengths-based interventions. Full article

Organized youth sport has considerable potential to promote young people’s physical health, well-being, and personal and social development. However, these positive outcomes are not guaranteed. When sport environments are poorly structured, excessively performance-oriented, or inadequately supervised, participation may also lead to exclusion, excessive pressure, and other harmful experiences. Creating genuinely youth-centered sport environments is therefore essential, both to foster positive developmental outcomes and to prevent transgressive behavior. Despite growing attention to these issues, the field of youth sport lacks an overarching framework for the development of pedagogically sound, development-oriented, and socially safe sport environments. This study aimed to develop an overarching framework that integrates the developmental, motivational, and safeguarding dimensions of youth sport into one coherent model for creating optimal learning environments. Through an iterative process, a practice-based framework was developed, theoretically grounded, and initially operationalized. Early versions of the framework were subsequently examined for conceptual alignment through expert opinions, focus groups, and group discussions with existing European youth sport initiatives. This process resulted in the development of the Youth Sport Compass (YSC), a coherent conceptual and practical framework designed to support youth-centered and socially safe sport environments. Experts from different countries and disciplines considered the framework highly relevant, conceptually robust, and broadly applicable in practice. The YSC provides a strong conceptual and practical foundation for coaches, sport organizations, and policymakers seeking to create pedagogically sound, youth-centered, and socially safe sport environments. Although the YSC is firmly grounded in theory and practice, it has yet to be empirically validated. Further research is needed to assess its validity and practical effectiveness. Full article

This paper offers a theoretical reinterpretation of the groundbreaking Greentown study using Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice. Rather than presenting new empirical findings, it examines previously published research to study children’s involvement in organised crime networks through a relational, practice-based lens. Dominant approaches to youth offending and gang participation tend to focus on individual risk factors, programme effectiveness or structural indicators and can struggle to account for the enduring social logics through which criminal authority is reproduced across generations. Drawing on Bourdieusian concepts of field, capital and symbolic power, the paper interprets Greentown as a localised social field in which a core family network accumulates and deploys social, cultural, economic and symbolic capital to secure compliance, cultivate loyalty and sustain informal forms of governance. Attention is paid to the role of symbolic narratives and mythmaking in minimising the visible presence of the state and normalising participation for young people and residents. The analysis illustrates how such symbolic orders can persist even where individual agents desist, contributing to the relative stability of networked harm. The paper argues that Bourdieu provides a coherent and theoretically disciplined framework for understanding organised criminal networks as socially embedded fields and suggests that interventions attentive to symbolic power and misrecognition may complement existing criminal justice responses. While explicitly interpretive in scope, the paper points towards the value of theory-led re-readings of empirical research for addressing the complex and ‘wicked’ nature of organised networked offending. Full article

This article examines how Ecuadorian national digital newspapers represented adolescents and youth-coded young adults associated with crime during 2025, with particular attention to lexical labeling, moral attribution, visual framing, editorial prominence, news values and the near-presence or absence of educational discourse. The study is based on qualitative content analysis of Spanish-language digital press coverage published in El Universo, El Comercio, Extra, La Hora, GK, Primicias, Vistazo, El Mercurio and Expreso across seven journalistic genres: news, note, feature article, report, editorial, interview and chronicle. The article argues that media discourse does not merely describe youth violence; it actively constructs public intelligibility about who young people are, how danger is recognized and whether social responses are imagined in punitive, preventive or restorative terms. Grounded in media framing theory, news values, moral panic studies, child-friendly justice, critical sociology, school push-out scholarship and philosophies of education and human development, the article shows the inferential route from media representation to educational reintegration: when coverage individualizes adolescent violence, minimizes school interruption and masks structural conditions, it narrows the policy imagination through which young people are understood as educable, rights-bearing and recoverable subjects. The paper ultimately argues that the long-term reduction of violence in Ecuador requires not only security responses but also an integral reintegration agenda centered on education, dignified work, child-sensitive justice and restorative social policy. Full article

Individuals who have experienced a violent injury are at an increased risk of subsequent reinjury. The traumatic event may increase one’s motivation to change the modifiable factors that are associated with violence risk. The current paper describes the assessment of potentially modifiable risk factors in a recently developed hospital-based violence intervention program (HVIP) for youth. Individuals aged 17–24 who sought hospital treatment for violent injury at a Level 1 Trauma Center enrolled to participate in a quasi-experimental study designed to evaluate a motivational-interviewing-informed case management HVIP (N = 48). Descriptive analyses of modifiable risk factors assessed at baseline for participants, including substance use, employment, housing, mental health issues, and firearm-related beliefs and behaviors, were conducted. Participants identified primarily as male (85%) and Black (87%). Commonly acknowledged risk factors included: PTSD (38%), unemployment or marginal employment (73%), low educational attainment (44% < high school equivalency), and daily marijuana use (55%). Participants’ acknowledgement of unsafe firearm behaviors was highly variable, with 50% denying any firearm carriage in the past 12 months. Nevertheless, participants reported neutral-to-moderate firearm beliefs, with moderate endorsement of needing a firearm for protection (M = 3.77, SD = 2.2) and acknowledgment that most people they knew carry a firearm (M = 3.6, SD = 2.0). However, there was mild disagreement with the idea that firearm carriage would reduce the likelihood of being victimized (M = 2.67, SD = 2.2). Given the variability in the reporting of unsafe firearm behaviors, HVIPs overly focused on firearm behaviors may not be appropriate for youth. Full article

While recent studies have begun to investigate the interaction between individual characteristics and parenting practices in the development of child-to-parent violence, empirical evidence remains limited, particularly among young adults. This study examines the role of youth impulsivity as a moderator of the relationship between parental punitive discipline and child-to-parent violence. The sample consisted of 1041 young adults (51.1% women, 48.9% men), aged between 18 and 25 years (M_age = 21.41, SD = 1.94), who lived with their parents. Participants completed the Child-to-Parent Violence Questionnaire, the Inventory of Parental Discipline Methods, and the Barratt Impulsivity Scale. Results indicated that parental punitive discipline and impulsivity were positively associated with violence toward both fathers and mothers. Impulsivity moderated only the relationship between punitive maternal discipline and child-to-parent violence (toward both the father and the mother). Specifically, this effect was stronger at higher levels of impulsivity. These findings highlight the importance of considering both individual traits and parental practices, as well as their interaction, in understanding child-to-parent violence during emerging adulthood. They also have important theoretical and practical implications for prevention and intervention. Full article

Firearm homicide is a leading cause of death among children and young men in the U.S. (ages 1–19), with young Black males in urban environments facing rates 18-to-24-fold higher than their non-Hispanic White peers in 2023. A key precursor to firearm violence victimization is weapon-carrying behavior (WCB), defined as carrying, concealing, or displaying firearms or other weapons in community or social contexts that elevate risk for injury, interpersonal threats, or law enforcement contact. Several structural, behavioral, and trauma-based risk factors fuel weapon-carrying. Yet these WCBs are rarely studied in tandem, leaving a critical gap in our understanding of these high-risk behaviors for youth. This cross-sectional study leveraged baseline data from a convenience sample of 226 violence-exposed urban young Black males, ages 15–24 (M_age = 18.3 years; SD = 3.1) enrolled in a trauma-informed digital firearm violence prevention pilot study. Eligibility required prior personal or witnessed experience of youth violence; reported prevalence therefore characterizes a high-risk subgroup rather than urban young Black males as a whole. Past-30-day weapon-carrying frequency was measured across five YRBS-aligned categories (0, 1, 2 to 3, 4 to 5, and 6+ days) and modeled as a categorical index under negative binomial regression. Associations with peer and community violence exposure, substance use, sociodemographic, and socioeconomic factors were estimated as incidence rate ratios (IRRs) with 95% CI. Past-30-day weapon carrying was reported by 42.5% of participants, with carrying frequency ranging from 1 day to 6 or more days. Participants reported high levels of direct victimization (64.8%), witnessing community violence (76.4%), and use of nonprescribed medications, including in instances preceding violence. In the fully adjusted model, indicators of violence exposure were the most consistent correlates of carrying. Direct victimization (IRR = 1.15, p < 0.05), general exposure to violence or aggression (IRR = 7.82, p < 0.01), and physical fighting (IRR = 1.11, p < 0.05) remained independently significant. Conversely, associations with substance use, dating aggression, and employment were attenuated, suggesting shared ecological vulnerability rather than independent causal pathways. Findings underscore the central role of chronic violence exposure and support the need for trauma-informed, multilevel prevention strategies in clinical and community settings. Full article

Background: Understanding firearm ownership and acquisition practices may provide insight into how youth access firearms and develop norms around ownership. Methods: Using a mixed-methods, participatory approach, we examined motivations for firearm ownership, perceptions of responsible ownership, acquisition methods, and associated safety behaviors among adults and youth. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 249 youth and adults who were firearm owners or lived in high-violence areas. Surveys were completed by a community-based sample of 122 youth and a national sample of 446 adult firearm owners. Results: Across qualitative and quantitative data, protection and hunting were the most common reasons for firearm ownership among adults and youth, and gun or sporting goods stores were the most frequently reported acquisition source. Adult definitions of responsible ownership emphasized secure storage, firearm handling proficiency, concealed carrying, and educating others. Latent class analyses identified three classes of ownership motivations and four classes of acquisition methods. Class membership varied by demographic characteristics and firearm-related behaviors, including storage and carrying practices. Conclusion: Overlapping motivations and acquisition pathways among adults and youth, along with class-based differences in storage and carrying behaviors, suggest that adult firearm practices shape youth exposure and access. Efforts to reduce youth firearm harm should prioritize promoting secure storage and responsible acquisition among adult firearm owners, particularly within groups with levels of risk. Full article

Background: Governments increasingly seek whole-system, public-health approaches to prevent serious youth violence. However, there is limited empirical evidence on how such approaches are implemented and sustained in complex, post-conflict settings characterised by coercive control, political instability, and fragmented system ownership. Aim: This study examines the Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime (EPPOC) in Northern Ireland as a system-level implementation architecture for addressing serious youth violence, with a focus on how coordinated action was enabled, constrained, and adapted over time. Methods: We conducted an embedded qualitative case study of EPPOC using systematic analysis of programme documentation, independent evaluations, oversight reports, and population-level data spanning nine years of delivery. Implementation science frameworks (ERIC, Proctor’s implementation outcomes, and CFIR) were applied retrospectively as analytic lenses to examine implementation strategies, outcomes, and contextual determinants. Results: EPPOC demonstrated strong implementation outcomes in acceptability and adoption across statutory and community sectors, supported by cross-government governance, trauma-informed workforce development, and shared learning systems. Penetration and sustainability were more variable and constrained by political instability, short-term funding cycles, uneven departmental ownership, and coercive community conditions. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the most transferable element of EPPOC is not individual interventions but the implementation architecture that enabled coordinated, trauma-responsive action across government in a highly complex environment. This architecture represents a potentially replicable design pattern for jurisdictions seeking to address serious youth violence where traditional programme models struggle to operate. Full article

Name.Narrate.Navigate (NNN) is a trauma-informed program for justice-involved young people aged 12–18 years, recognising that experience and use of violence are often interconnected and may involve serious criminal behaviour, including vulnerability to criminal exploitation. NNN addresses a gap in evidence-based, culturally responsive tertiary interventions for this cohort in regional New South Wales (NSW), Australia, integrating dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) principles with Aboriginal ways of knowing and doing, co-designed through community-based participatory research (CBPR) with Aboriginal community members, young people, and frontline practitioners. The program aims to strengthen skills for self-awareness, self-regulation and healthy connection through relational, creative, and participatory approaches. Using a realist evaluation framework, this paper examines what works in NNN, for whom, and under what circumstances. Drawing on participant session ratings, practitioner observations, program documentation, and interviews, findings are organised across four domains: effects, mechanisms, moderators, and implementation. Indicative findings show that engagement, emerging changes in the narratives of self, and developing skills for self-regulation were most evident when trauma-informed and culturally safe practice was enacted within genuinely relational, strengths-based encounters. These conditions are identified and discussed as transferable principles for the field, key amongst them that intervention readiness must be treated as a capacity to be actively built rather than a precondition to be screened for; and that creative, participant-led methods represent an epistemological commitment to whose knowledge counts in practice. This case study contributes to a critically underserved evidence base by documenting not only what a tertiary youth violence intervention looks like, but the conditions under which it begins to work and for whom. Full article

Background: Transgender and gender expansive (TGE) people experience high rates of interpersonal victimization, which has been linked to high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, a highly disabling and under-studied mental illness among TGE people). This systematic review identifies, classifies, critically appraises, and synthesizes the peer-reviewed literature describing the association between interpersonal victimization and post-traumatic stress among TGE people. This review collates what is known about the associations between victimization and PTSD among TGE people and makes recommendations to guide future research and intervention development. Methods: Searches were conducted across five databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, PsycInfo, and CINAHL) following PRISMA guidelines. Inclusion criteria were: English language; peer-reviewed original research; articles describing the association between victimization and PTSD among TGE youth or adults; reporting TGE-specific data. Exclusion criteria were: reviews, commentaries without original data, dissertations or theses, conference abstracts, animal studies, studies without TGE-specific findings, and case studies. Quality appraisal was completed for all studies, which included a discussion of bias. Data extraction was completed by two independent authors, and conflicts were resolved by a third. Data were stratified by gender identity, race or ethnicity, and type of violence for further synthesis. Results: 25 studies were evaluated for design, measure quality, and key findings. Findings were highly consistent across studies: multiple forms of interpersonal violence (e.g., childhood maltreatment, sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and transgender-specific victimization) were significantly associated with PTSD symptom severity or diagnosis across diverse identities and geographic contexts. All studies examining childhood sexual abuse reported significant associations with PTSD outcomes, highlighting early life as a critical period of vulnerability. Samples were disproportionately White and adult, with limited examination of intersectional experiences shaped by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Discussion: Interpersonal violence-related PTSD among TGE populations reflects a pervasive and systemic pattern of trauma rooted in structural discrimination rather than isolated individual risk. Addressing this inequity requires multilevel prevention and intervention strategies. Future research should prioritize longitudinal designs, culturally responsive measurement tools, and intersectional analyses to inform prevention, clinical care, and policy responses. The majority of studies were cross-sectional designs, so causality cannot be inferred. Additionally, the samples were disproportionately White and adult, which may bias the magnitude of associations reported and limit generalizability to racially and ethnically diverse TGE populations. Although many studies reported race and ethnicity descriptively, none disaggregated violence-related PTSD outcomes by racial or ethnic group within TGE samples, representing a critical limitation for intersectional analysis. Full article

The present qualitative study explored perspectives from youth, caregivers, and community partners who lived in or worked with organizations that served two low-income, urban communities exposed to disproportionate rates of firearm violence. The purpose of the study was to (a) identify changes that community members and community partners would like to see in terms of safety, (b) compare the similarities and differences in responses across the three participant groups. Youth (n = 11), caregivers (n = 20), and community partners (n = 41) participated in semi-structured interviews as part of a larger study evaluating community strategies to reduce community-levels of youth violence. Perspectives on changes related to safety were represented across four themes: (1) Changes to policing, (2) Increasing safety, (3) More opportunities for youth and family programs and activities, (4) Structural and resource investments in communities. Overall, qualitative findings offered a context-specific picture of desired areas for change to improve community safety. The results contribute to a framework for community mobilization and have implications for the development of comprehensive community violence prevention initiatives. Full article

Background: Miami-Dade County ranks first in Florida for HIV cases, yet broad epidemiological data often masks the “on-the-ground” reality of its most vulnerable residents. While standard reports suggest declining domestic violence, these statistics fail to account for community-defined health crises—the “SAVA” syndemic (substance use, violence, and HIV/AIDS)—occurring within localized micro-communities. Methods: Leveraging five years of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Grounded Theory, this study engaged 97 community members and leaders to unmask these hidden burdens. We employed a multi-level sequential design and methodological triangulation, incorporating community forums, focus groups, and interviews with farm-workers, inner-city residents, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Results: Findings reveal a disconnect between official data and community reporting, including “Party and Play” methamphetamine/sex-trafficking networks in the LGBTQ+ scene, rampant youth vaping in inner cities, and child sexual abuse and opioids in farm-working communities. Mental health emerged as a pervasive need, masked by substance use and suppressed by cultural stigmas and institutional fears. Conclusions: Findings from this study highlight the value of community-level approaches in generating localized, culturally grounded insights that may not be fully captured in more aggregated geographic analyses (e.g., zip code, county, or state levels). We propose a collaborative, multi-sectoral model to address the systemic factors underlying the SAVA syndemic in these communities. Full article

Serious youth violence is a public health issue nationally in the UK and internationally. The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) was established in March 2019, with a £200 million endowment and a ten-year mandate, with a mission to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. This article gives an overview of YEF’s successes and challenges to date, focusing specifically on the experience of evaluating tertiary interventions. After providing an overview of YEF’s approach to funding and evaluation, the article summarises YEF’s work focused on tertiary prevention, including: work to test interventions already being implemented in the UK; adapting and evaluating evidence-based interventions from other jurisdictions in the UK; innovations in a group approach to carrying out evaluations; and embedding a focus on racial equity in tertiary prevention. Next, the article discusses the design issues involved in high-quality evaluation of tertiary prevention, including the scale required and the processes for obtaining consent from young people to participate in evaluations. The article then documents the many challenges and lessons learned from implementing tertiary prevention evaluations, especially focusing on the recruitment and retention of young people. Finally, the article discusses the lessons and places them in a wider context. Full article