If there is one thing that we’ve truly come to understand the past decade, it is that health is influenced by the places in which people live, learn, work, and play. In addition to the work we’ve supported to increase access to care, we’ve also funded work that transforms communities to make healthy choices easy and affordable. Healthy and safe community environments include many things but above all, they need to be free of violence.
Violence holds victims, families, friends and neighborhoods hostage. It rips communities apart. Violence takes many forms; it’s not just about attacks by strangers. Domestic violence wrenches apart families in our community every year
Over the past decade, the Greater Kansas City area has seen collaborations from many sectors to combat violence in our community. This includes partnerships between police, public health, and domestic violence shelters, among others, working together on innovative approaches to building safe communities.
Supporting safe places blog posts:
Through these partnerships, we’ve witnessed an increasingly growing interest in poverty, violence and other societal problems.
Whether it’s working to help identify and treat mental illness in victims and perpetrators, creating specialty courts to better help those in need of mental health services or developing new protocols to address domestic violence, these partners are working to help victims get help earlier.
Crime prevention projects are using approaches that treat crime and violence like contagious diseases and look for innovative ways to prevent these “diseases” from spreading throughout the community.
The work our grantees are doing aren’t just about stopping crime. It’s about giving people a living environment, free from violence, where they feel safe. Over the past decade we’ve seen these projects show great promise in reducing and preventing crime and violence and promoting health and wellness.
As we look ahead, we know that no community can afford the costs of violence. And that a healthier, safer community benefits all of us. HCF is proud to support initiatives that make this region a safer place.
This blog post is part of A Healthy 10.
CATEGORIES
A Healthy 10, Behavioral Health Care, Mental Health Care
