Funding Without Alignment Is Just Spending: Colorado’s Model for Alignment to Maximize Impacts on Youth Well-being

May 20, 2026

Public funding for youth well-being isn’t lacking in effort or investment. But when dollars move through disconnected systems, even the best intentions can fail to translate into meaningful outcomes. What if the challenge isn’t how much we fund, but how those investments work together? Colorado is testing a different approach: aligning funding, data, and strategy across agencies so that public dollars can operate as a more coordinated system rather than a collection of parallel but sometimes siloed efforts.

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Mental Health Meets Firearm Safety: Innovative Strategies to Reduce Firearm Suicide

March 16, 2026

Firearms are involved in 55 percent of suicides in the United States, accounting for more than 27,000 deaths every year as documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.  Yet this crisis remains largely invisible in public discourse. This webinar makes the case that the tools to act are already within reach.

This webinar brings together practitioners, funders, and public health leaders working at the intersection of mental health and firearm safety. Hear how mental health systems can integrate firearm access screening across the continuum of care, and why culturally responsive assessments are essential to making these approaches effective and equitable. Learn from Stanislaus County’s firsthand experience adopting this model and join a candid conversation about the funding strategies, system changes, and community partnerships that make this work possible. 

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The Keys to Successful Collaboration Between a State-based Health Foundation and a National Funder Collaborative

March 16, 2026

Discussions about firearms in the US are often focused on urban gun violence and mass shootings. But firearm injury and death is a public health crisis that touches every community—urban and rural, red states and blue—and it intersects with issues many health funders care about: mental health, suicide prevention, and health equity.

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Meeting the Moment to Prevent Violence: How Cross-Sector Collaborators Are Leading the Way

March 3, 2026

What happens when hospitals start treating violence as preventable? Across the country, health systems are pioneering models that connect clinical care to community violence intervention (CVI), and the early evidence is compelling.

This panel brings together three institutions at the forefront of this shift. Massachusetts General Hospital’s Gun Violence Prevention Center is training the next generation of clinicians to identify risk and navigate difficult conversations through case-based simulations. New research from Boston University offers findings from the first large-scale study of Boston Medical Center’s Violence Intervention Advocacy Program (VIAP), showing how in-depth interventions for young adult survivors of violence can reduce their risk of future involvement. And the Milken Institute’s survey findings discuss the funding landscape and strategies that sustain these approaches as federal support fluctuates.

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Medicaid and Community Violence: Pathways to Sustainable Care

January 23, 2026

American cities are witnessing historic declines in gun violence. In recent years, cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago have all seen precipitous drops in homicides, with some reaching multi-decade record lows (Washington Post 2025). While there are many causes of this decline, experts in the field point to community violence intervention as driving the trend.

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Communities Fighting Back to Prevent Firearm Violence

October 31, 2025

Can communities sustain the fight against firearm violence amid shrinking federal support? In Newark, New Jersey, local funders and advocates are showing what’s possible.

This panel brings together public health leaders, funders, and community advocates for a conversation on how democratizing access to data can empower community organizations as collaborators for public safety, and how funders can invest in, scale, and sustain these efforts. Although this discussion is rooted in Newark’s urban setting, the approaches highlighted offer valuable lessons for all funders interested in community safety.

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Reducing Gun Violence in New Orleans through Cross-Sector Collaboration with Philanthropy

May 9, 2025

Firearm violence is a preventable public health issue that affects communities across the United States. Yet, rates of exposure vary significantly from one region to another, shaped by socio-economic disparities, demographics, and local gun policies. This webinar explores the role of multi-sector partnerships, including the philanthropic sector, to effectively reduce firearm violence. 

The moderated discussion will be a candid conversation about best practices and key challenges in developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining violence intervention programs. Panelists include credible messengers from a community-based organization, local government, and an academic research partner, who are collaborating to reduce violence through community and hospital-based programs in New Orleans, Louisiana. Participants will leave the session with a better understanding of the critical role of philanthropy in advancing efforts to reduce firearm violence, along with insights to facilitate successful cross-sector collaboration.  

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2024 Survey Summary: Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies

March 13, 2025

GIH conducted a survey in September 2024 about funder engagement in firearm violence prevention. This fact sheet summarizes the survey results with a total sample of 81 health funders. This public health crisis and social justice issue is preventable, and health funders have an important role to play in advancing firearm violence prevention efforts.

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Firearm Violence Prevention Learning Community: Equitable Approaches to Firearm Violence Prevention Research and Evaluation

January 28, 2025

The Black and Brown Collective for Community Solutions to Gun Violence is a network of dozens of multidisciplinary researchers across academic and other research organizations that engage in and promote rigorous, culturally-responsive, and equitable research on community violence. The Collective is developing an equitable research framework designed to guide community-engaged research in and with Black and Brown neighborhoods impacted by gun violence. This webinar explored the context that motivated the framework and its development, examined opportunities and challenges with using an equitable research framework, and provided concrete and practical examples of how the framework can be used and applied in community violence prevention research projects.

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Firearm Violence Prevention Learning Community: Exploring the Current Policy Landscape

October 24, 2024

Grantmakers In Health offers a series of Learning Community programs to advance philanthropic strategies for preventing firearm-related deaths and injuries. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that public policies have a significant influence on various types of firearm-related outcomes, including homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings. This virtual convening of the Firearm Violence Prevention Learning Community explored the current policy landscape —both recent policy developments and future opportunities for policy change at the state and federal levels— and considered how philanthropic investments can best inform and influence policymakers. Speakers included Sean Holihan of Giffords, Nick Suplina of Everytown for Gun Safety, and Adzi Vokhiwa of Community Justice Action Fund.

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