In a press conference on Oct. 1, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin announced new grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Northwestern University and the University of Chicago for gun violence prevention research. The event was held at the non-profit Heartland Alliance located in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.
This grant funding is part of the $25 million Durbin worked to include in the Fiscal Year 2020 appropriations bill to support gun violence research at NIH and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Professor Andrew Papachristos, of the Department of Sociology, received part of the grant. Papachristos is the faculty director of the Northwestern Neighborhood and Network Initiative (N3), and he spoke at the press conference about the need to support the well-being of the violence interrupters, as well as N3’s recent research. He has found that new collaborative efforts, like Chicago CRED and Communities Partnering 4 Peace (CP4P), have been successful in reducing neighborhood violence.
Read more about the grant in Northwestern Now.