Recognizing positive early childhood development as an important component of a comprehensive violence prevention strategy, the New Orleans Health Department is working to bridge their community safety and early childhood efforts. Chris Gunther presented on New Orleans’s violence prevention and early childhood work as part of a Cradle to Community panel at the 2016 American Public Health Association’s Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. This narrative is excerpted from his remarks.

Fathers and father figures are essential members of families and communities who play many roles, including raising children and fostering safety in the community. As part of the national project, Cradle to Community: A Focus on Community Safety and Healthy Child Development funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this brief outlines challenges and barriers in the early childhood system and the criminal justice system, opportunities for systems changes, and examples of on the ground efforts to change systems, norms, and outcomes.

As part of the national project, Cradle to Community: A Focus on Community Safety and Healthy Child Development funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this brief shares key findings and answers questions on what the community development sector does and how it relates to early childhood and violence prevention. The brief builds on the overlap between the sectors and puts forth what multisector collaboration could look like between the three sectors, including challenges, tips, potential shared outcomes, partner strengths, and examples of local joint strategies.

This report by Prevention Institute and the Center for the Study of Social Policy makes the case for action and delineates opportunities for systems, policy, and practice change at the intersection of community safety and positive early child development. For example, emergent opportunities at the intersection include changing norms about fathers and fatherhood through systems and practice change; engaging the community development sector to address housing issues through policies and practices; and building the early education to employment pipeline through state and local policy change.

The 2016 Cradle to Community convening was the first opportunity to bring together two national networks: Prevention Institute’s UNITY City Network and the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s Early Childhood Learning and Innovation Network for Communities (EC-LINC).

Direct experience as well as exposure to multiple forms of violence can have a compounding negative impact on children’s development. Despite the strong relationship, the fields of practice addressing different forms of violence have largely been silo-ed. This brief summarizes five connections between child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, and community violence and makes the case for an integrated movement for safety in our homes and communities. It draws on recent research and analysis on the linkages between multiple forms of violence and offers examples of emerging actions to address the linkages.