SYNC Safety

Strategies for Youth and Neighborhood Centered (SYNC) Safety is a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded project designed to increase partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs) that serve Black and Brown communities with inequitable risk for violence and educate the field about the role of public health in building safer communities. To improve capacity to establish and maintain partnerships within and across sectors, Prevention Institute has assembled a team of leading organizations, networks, and practitioners focused on community and youth violence prevention with an emphasis on advancing safety in Black and Brown communities.

During Year 1, the project team recruited and established a learning community focused on understanding how CBOs can integrate and strengthen the principles and practices of a public health approach into their community safety work to prevent and reduce firearm-related injuries and deaths. Virtual and in-person workshops for the learning community include implementing data-to-action, developing a community prevention strategy, the importance of multi-sectoral comprehensive approaches to community and youth violence prevention, and information on the latest science on evidence-based injuries and deaths. 

Year 2, beginning in October 2024, will delve more deeply into these topics and continue to strengthen peer-to-peer learning opportunities.

The project draws on core community safety tools and frameworks—including CDC’s Resource for Action(link is external), and Prevention Institute’s Community Safety Realized—to guide learning community activities.

Project partners include: 

• Center for Law and Social Policy
• Community Justice Action Fund
• UC Davis California Firearm Violence Research Center
• Reggie Moore
• WeCollab
• Cities United
• National Compadres Network

Learn more about investing in youth and improving community safety by listening to these PI podcasts:

• Community safety through investing in youth: Harris County youth justice community
• Community organizing to prevent violence

Syncing Up for Safety! Convening Re-cap:
This past June, Prevention Institute, We-Collab, and our partners convened the inaugural meeting of the SYNC Safety learning community. SYNC (Strategies for Youth and Neighborhood Centered Safety) is a CDC-supported project to increase the capacity of Black- and Brown-led community-based organizations to take a public health and health equity-focused approach to preventing violence. Please join us for this look at the convening!

SYNC Learning Community Workshops:

Through the below series of monthly learning labs, the 30 community organizations that are part of SYNC Safety engaged with experts and each other to build their capacity on violence prevention strategy and policy and systems change efforts. Scroll down below the PDF to see how to engage with these labs.