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Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC)

Violence is taking its toll among young people in many of the country’s urban communities, including Philadelphia, where the Center for Injury Research and Prevention is based. The Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC) was established in 2006 through a cooperative agreement with The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the goal of preventing violence and aggression in the lives of young people in West and Southwest Philadelphia.

Through a truly collaborative relationship, PCVPC brings together academic institutions (The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia , the University of Pennsylvania , Temple University and Drexel University ) and community-based organizations to share equally in the planning, leadership, analysis and dissemination of research results.

40 Tips for 40 Days

Evidence-based Tips for Preventing Violence
To honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “beloved community” of peace and brotherhood, Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), former Philadelphia Mayor Rev. Dr. W. Wilson Goode Jr., and the Corp. for National Community Service have launched the "40 Days Of Non-Violence: Building the Beloved Community" initiative in Philadelphia. April 4, 2008, marks the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s violent assassination, and this milestone presents an important opportunity to draw attention to his life and teachings. Below are 40 ideas that we can use and share to prevent violence and build our communities. Starting with these 40 tips, we can individually and collectively make a difference in the lives of our neighbors and our families.

Mission and Goals

PCVPC’s mission is to design, implement and evaluate programs that enhance the resiliency of communities affected by violence, and to reduce the frequency and impact of youth violence, injury and death in communities and West and Southwest Philadelphia. PCVPC researchers are committed not only to determining which interventions are most effective, but also to ensuring that these programs can be supported by the local communities in the long term through ongoing collaborations between scientists and community members.

Specific goals of the Collaborative include:

• Advance existing approaches and knowledge through rigorous community-based participatory research
• Build community capacity to engage in youth violence prevention efforts and reduce the negative impacts of violence
• Conduct effective primary violence prevention efforts in the community
• Create an effective and sustainable organizational structure through which we conduct community-participatory youth violence prevention research programs and disseminate these methods and results to a broad range of violence prevention stakeholders.
• Build a model system for information flow that effectively transfers information both to and from community settings.

Key areas of Research

The Center consists of a central research project that will take promising models of primary prevention programs (those that focus on the effects of violence on all children in a community, and not just those that are considered “high-risk”) for youth ages 10-14 and adapt them for use in the West Southwest Philadelphia community in partnership with community members and community-based organizations.

The Center also funds pilot research projects that seek to understand how violence affects the lives of these young people. A key goal of the Center will be to learn how to best share research results with the community and incorporate community feedback into the design of research. PCVPC is founded on a commitment to ensuring the long-term sustainability of violence prevention programs in the community.

Funding and Partners

The PCVPC is funded by a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the Urban Partnership Academic Centers of Excellence UPACE, and is the first UPACE to be based in Philadelphia. In 2005, the CDC also funded eight Academic Centers of Excellence as part of a national violence prevention initiative.

From the inception of PCVPC, researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Drexel University have joined with members of the Philadelphia Area Research Community Coalition (PARCC) as co-investigators and core directors. PARCC is a coalition of community-based organizations whose mission is to “establish and facilitate effective long-term and sustainable research partnerships between community organizations and institutions that have a shared vision and leadership to change and improve the health of the community in W/SW Philadelphia.” One of PARCC’s founders is Dr. Jerry Johnson , Chief of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.

The current collaborators in the PCVPC represent unique and diverse areas of community and academic expertise. Together, these partners decide how to implement programs and create useful and meaningful information that supports the community’s ability to reduce impact the incidence of violence. The PCVPC will also link with other citywide community violence prevention programs, such as the Blueprints for a Safer Philadelphia , The Pennsylvania Injury Reporting and Intervention System , and the Youth Violence Reduction Project , in order to make the most of the growing momentum for creating safer Philadelphia communities.

Structure and Staff

The Center has four Cores: Administrative, Research, Information, and Communication & Dissemination.

Administrative Core Directors:

• Joel Fein, MD, MPH, is the Director and Principal Investigator of the PCVPC. He is a pediatric emergency physician at CHOP and a researcher whose body of work spans the topic of youth violence, domestic violence, traumatic stress and mental health.

• Rose Cheney, PhD is the Executive Director of The Firearm and Injury Center at Penn (FICAP). She has a long background in public health and community interventions for substance abuse and violence prevention, as well as in emergency medical services;
• Tara Hayden, MHSA, is a founding member of PARCC. She is an experienced health care administrator/consultant with particular expertise in building collaborations with communities and developing community capacity to participate in research.

Research Core Directors

• Terry Guerra, MS is the Director of Community Development and Human Resources at AchieveAbility, a member organization of PARCC;
• Alice Hausman, PhD, MPH is the Chair of the Department of Public Health at Temple University. She has extensive experience in evaluation, participatory research, and connections between research and practice;
• Therese Richmond, PhD, CRNP, FAAN is a member of the nursing and medical faculty at The University of Pennsylvania and a co-founder of FICAP. She has an interest in the nexus of psychological responses and violent injury.

Information Core Directors

• Charles Branas, PhD, is a noted injury epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania with interests in youth violence, suicide, and the relationship between alcohol availability and injury;
• Thomas Ten Have, PhD, MPH is a biostatistician the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in statistical analyses to accommodate patient preferences and adaptive treatment regimes;
• Alia Walker, BS is a member of PARCC. She is a Community Activities Specialist and Site Director at Shaw Middle School for Children’s Service, Inc, and Founder of Women of Peace, a Philadelphia-based anti-violence association.

Communication and Dissemination (C & D) Core Directors

• Thomas Henry is an original member of PARCC, Chair of the Southwest Action Coalition (SWAC) and the President of the Kingsessing Recreation Advisory Council. He has over 30 years of experiences as a community advocate, activist, and service provider in Philadelphia.
• Stephen Leff, PhD is a psychologist at CHOP and a national expert in using community partnership-based methodology to conduct aggression prevention programs and measurement development. Dr. Leff will also be the Principal Investigator of the centerpiece research project;
• John Rich, MD, MPH is Chair of the Department of Health Management & Policy at the Drexel School of Public Health. He employs quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods to urban health interventions.

Other Center participants include:

• Julie Becker, PhD, Temple Department of Public Health, Interventionist, centerpiece project
• Jac Ferber, JD, CPA, MBA, AchieveAbility and PARCC, Co-I, Pilot Project
• Alexandra Hanlon, PhD, biostatistician at Temple University, Evaluator, centerpiece project
• Anne Teitelman, PhD, Penn School of Nursing, Co-I, Pilot Project
• Duane Thomas, PhD, , Penn Graduate School of Education, Co-I, centerpiece project
• Douglas Wiebe, PhD, epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Co-I, Pilot Project

PCVPC advisory committees will help guide the center, bringing in expertise in areas such as public health, community advocacy, business, law, and financial management.

External Advisory Committee (EAC)

• Ira Harkavy PhD
• Stephen Hargarten, MD, MPH
• Jerry Johnson MD
• William Laufer JD, PhD
• Karin Rhodes MD, MS
• Don Schwarz MD, MPH, MBA
• John Templeton Jr. MD

Community Advisory Committee (CAC)

• Jac Ferber JD, CPA, MBA
• Tara Hayden MSHA
• Mr. Thomas Henry

Resource Advisory Committee (RAC)

• Charles Branas PhD
• Ms. Denise Clayton
• Ted Corbin MD
• Kathy Meyers, PhD
• John Rich MD, MPH
• Jeffrey Roth PhD
• Neil Weiner, PhD