The CDC National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (YVPCs): Rigorous Evaluation of Prevention Strategies to Prevent and Reduce Community Rates of Youth Violence

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC or Injury Center) is soliciting research proposals to expand the evidence base for the prevention of community violence involving youth ages 10-34 years. The purpose of this announcement is to fund the National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (Youth Violence Prevention Centers or YVPCs) to continue to build the evidence base for violence prevention strategies and approaches that reduce community rates of youth violence within one or more geographically defined communities with rates of community violence that are higher than the national one. Applications should focus on a community or set of communities with high rates of youth violence (i.e., a community or communities that have multiple empirically robust risk factors for youth violence and where rates of youth violence are higher than the national average) for all key activities. The applicant should form a youth advisory council to provide input on the selection, implementation, and evaluation of youth violence prevention strategies. A rigorous evaluation will be conducted on at least two distinct prevention strategies related to at least two of the four research areas outlined in this NOFO that are designed to reduce community rates of youth violence in the selected community or set of communities. An administrative infrastructure will be established to support implementation, evaluation, and dissemination and sustainability activities; to foster necessary local collaborations to achieve the YVPC’s goals; and to work with other funded YVPCs as part of the YVPC Network. Finally, this NOFO will support the YVPC to train early career and junior researchers in youth violence prevention to complement the implementation, rigorous evaluation, and sresearch activities of the YVPC.