Risk and Resilience Factors of Participants in Urban Community Gun Violence Intervention & Prevention: Insights from the Advance Peace Program

Urban community-based gun violence prevention programs engage those with the greatest risk of perpetrating violence and provide them with services and supports to help them change their behaviors. Empirical studies of this public-health-oriented strategy, called community violence intervention (CVI), have been mixed, and few have reported which risk factors are most prevalent among participants. We offer detailed descriptive data about the risks and protective factors that participants in one CVI program, called Advance Peace, displayed at the onset of the intervention. Advance Peace operates in 13 cities and had over 1000 participants, or "fellows," between January 2021 and December 2024. We found that almost 34% of fellows were under 18 years old, 70.6% were African American, and over 90% were male. More than half (52.4%) reported poor mental health, 76.7% entered with four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and over 30% had over 7 ACEs; more than 56% had been shot at, and almost half had a prior firearm-related arrest and a family member killed by a gun. We found that 49.2% had both four or more ACEs and at least two-gun violence exposures. Among program participants, only 17% were receiving any social services at enrollment. We also found that more than 62% wanted to change their lifestyle, and more than half had assets and strengths that could be protective or buffering factors that might prevent future gun use. We conclude that CVI programs should capture both the risks and strengths of program participants to ensure violence prevention interventions are trauma informed and healing centered.