Strong neighbourhood ties can help shield community members from gun violence, according to a new Yale study.
"Violence results in chronic community-level trauma and stress, and undermines health, capacity, and productivity in these neighbourhoods," said lead author Emily Wang, assistant professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine, US.
"Police and government response to the problem has focused on the victim or the criminal. Our study focuses on empowering communities to combat the effects of living with chronic and persistent gun violence," Wang said.
Wang and her colleagues in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Programme (RWJF CSP) at Yale studied neighbourhoods in New Haven, Connecticut with high crime statistics.
They trained 17 community members in the Newhallville and West River neighbourhoods in research and survey methods to gather data from about 300 of their own neighbours.
This community-based participatory research - conducted during summer 2014 - helped to build local engagement within these neighbourhoods.
Over half of neighbours surveyed knew none or a few of their neighbours. Almost all of the study participants had heard a gun shot, two-thirds of them had a friend or family member hurt by a violent act, and nearly 60 per cent had a friend or family member killed.
Wang said preliminary findings show that social cohesion, or the strength of bonds between neighbours, is inversely associated with exposure to gun violence, and that a multi-sector approach that includes community members is required to address and prevent gun violence.
"Disaster preparedness principles like community resilience can be used to improve a community's ability to band together and use resources to respond to, withstand, recover from, and even grow from bad events," said Wang.
"Core components of these principles include social and economic well being, physical and psychological health, effective risk communication, social connectedness, and integration with organisations," Wang added.
