Cardiff Model Violence Prevention Project Featured in Fast Company
Violence is a serious public health problem that affects people of all ages, but according to the U.S. Department of Justice, more than half of violent crime (53 percent) in the United States is unreported to law enforcement. As a result of this, communities lack a complete understanding of where violence occurs and how to develop tailored prevention programs. The Cardiff Violence Prevention Model, developed by surgeon and Professor Jonathan Shepherd, MD, of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, provides a way for communities to gain more complete information as to where violence occurs and how to prevent it by forming partnerships between hospitals and law enforcement and others interested in violence prevention. The program has been credited with reducing admissions to Cardiff hospitals by at least 40 percent, compared to cities without the program.
Through a CDC Foundation grant funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Grady Memorial Hospital and DeKalb County Police Department created a local Cardiff Model partnership in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The purpose of this pilot is to document the strengths, challenges and costs of the Cardiff Model program and to determine technical needs. The prevention strategies implemented in the pilot have the potential to help guide future evaluation research and implementation of the model in the United States.
Last week, the Cardiff Model project was featured in Fast Company. Steven Sumner, MD, medical epidemiologist in the division of violence prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who works on this project, was interviewed in the article. “One of the great things about the Cardiff model,” according to Sumner, “is that it helps cities break down the silos and work in a collaborative way to solve violence.”
The Fast Company article also features other projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that are a part of their "global ideas for U.S. solutions" program. A toolkit of educational materials designed to help communities interested in implementing the Cardiff Model will be released to the public via CDC’s website later this year.
We are very grateful to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for their support of the Cardiff Model project, and we are excited for the potential of this project to encourage other communities to implement the model.
