Lisa Block, Senior Program Officer, The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey
The Newark, New Jersey community has made remarkable progress improving community safety and reducing gun violence. This past June, a seminal report, The Future of Public Safety: Exploring the Power and Possibility of Newark’s Reimagined Public Safety Ecosystem, was released by Equal Justice USA, the City of Newark, and the Newark Community Street Team. Researchers utilized community participatory research to assess Newark’s impactful approaches to improving public safety.
Grantmakers In Health’s Eileen Salinsky sat down with Lisa Block, Senior Program Officer at The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey (HFNJ) to discuss the role health philanthropy has played in this evolving public safety ecosystem.
What changes have contributed to Newark’s progress in addressing gun violence?
First, consider that homicides in Newark have decreased significantly over the last decade. In 2013, Newark had the third–highest murder rate in the country with 112 homicides that year. As of December 2022, that number dropped over 50 percent to 50. There has been an uptick in gun violence since the pandemic, but public safety approaches are demonstrating tremendous positive effect.
Newark has built an entire ecosystem of community-based programs and real-time interventions, many that are addressing the root causes of violence. This systemic approach developed over years and has adapted and expanded—as it must. The community serves as the architect and there are remarkable leaders, community outreach workers, clinicians, professionals, and residents engaged every day. Violence prevention programs are integrated in high-risk neighborhoods, Newark hospitals, police precincts, courts, after-school programs, mental health services, and schools.
Roundtables have been a key mechanism in coordinating efforts. For example, the South Ward Public Safety Roundtable meets every two weeks, convening residents, police, school staff, and healthcare professionals who review incidents, share information and resources, coordinate actionable steps to address risk or incidents, and prevent people in need from falling through the cracks. The community has brought a race equity lens to violence prevention work. In addition to community-driven efforts, the Newark Police Department was mandated to reduce use of force and aggression, which trigger re-traumatization by the person(s) involved. This work is ongoing, and the community is engaged. In 2020, Newark established the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery (OVP) after the murder of George Floyd and reallocated 5 percent of the police’s budget, about $11.5 million, to support OVP’s community-based public safety efforts.
The Future of Public Safety report provides a picture of how this came together and recognizes the many individuals and organizations that contributed to the changing dynamic. While the report is about Newark’s journey, it does suggest a blueprint others may follow. As Will Simpson, Equal Justice USA’s Director of Violence Reduction Initiatives shared, “The ingredients aren’t particular to Newark. We believe that other cities and communities, with the right map, can do the same.”
What role has The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey played in these efforts?
Our funding grew from a seed to a garden we have watered and has developed organically. In 2014, Newark’s newly elected mayor, Ras Baraka, declared gun violence a public health crisis and pledged to refocus resources on community-centered approaches. At the time, violence rates were very high, and the U.S. Department of Justice had issued a report which documented abusive policing practices in Newark that disproportionately affected Black residents. One of the first steps the mayor took was to bring in national leader Aqeela Sherrills to Newark to replicate models he used in Compton, California. These actions were inspired and informed by a long history of activism from the Newark community.
When the mayor and others convened a peace summit in 2015, our leadership was invited to participate, and HFNJ Trustees approved $25,000 in support of this initiative. At the time this was a seen as quite “outside the box” for us. We had funded some prior grants related to violence prevention, such as projects to promote healthy youth development and support formerly incarcerated people and their families, but these earlier investments were modest and somewhat fragmented. The CEO and trustees who attended the summit came away with a deeper understanding of gun violence in the Black community and, importantly, started building relationships with the leaders involved in this work.
As a healthcare foundation, the board and staff understood the connection between gun violence and public health and health equity. We listened to those taking the lead—Equal Justice USA’s executive and team, Stephanie Bonne, the Newark trauma surgeon who sought to launch a hospital intervention program, the head of the New Jersey Association of Black Psychologists, and Aqeela Sherrills, all of whom were setting priorities. Trauma, healing, and access to timely help were important attributes in the beginning. Based on these conversations, grant proposals were encouraged. As Senior Program Officer, I worked closely with applicants not only to understand the theory of change, but to hear from a community perspective including members of the police force what was needed and how grant funds could leverage promising initiatives. Trustees met at the precinct for this conversation as well. Some of the most humbling lessons early on were around understanding trauma and how to prevent retraumatization and the destructive responses it can fuel.
Since 2016, HFNJ has invested more than $2.5 million in Newark’s public safety ecosystem. Philanthropy continues to play a critical role in driving collective sustained impact. The first grants provided seed funding for innovative initiatives that later attracted other major funding, both public and private. Most of these programs remain part of the ecosystem. As programs have scaled, it is foundations that often keep the ecosystem healthy—by nimbly shifting resources, supporting capacity-building, covering urgent basic needs, and reducing the burden of bureaucracy, which can sometimes cause unintended challenges.
What are some of the The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey’s most significant investments in Newark’s public safety ecosystem?
The journey began with support to Equal Justice USA (2016-2018) for Trauma to Trust (T2T). This multi-session training program brings community members and law enforcement officials together to foster empathy and mutual understanding of trauma through conversations about race, trauma, violence, and social and economic inequity. T2T explores how repeated exposure to violence, including excessive use of force by law enforcement, triggers re-traumatization and creates individual and collective harm in the community. Hundreds have attended, and venues expanded over time to schools, etc.
T2T has served as a real lynchpin in reimagining public safety by paving the way for broader reforms. For example, Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) worked with the Chief of Police to hire social workers in precincts and implement trauma-informed police response protocols. EJUSA also co-convenes the Public Safety Roundtable, regularly convening local responders, community and school staff, volunteers, and violence prevention team members to review concerns or incidents and coordinate a response.
HFNJ seeded the University Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program at University Hospital in Newark (2017-2019), which places community health workers with lived experience at the bedside of gunshot and penetrating injury survivors during recovery. The health workers redirect patients to hospital and community-based mentorship, counseling, and other resources. We are proud that New Jersey has recognized the value of this program and today operates it with state funding.
A cornerstone of the public safety ecosystem is the Newark Community Street Team (NCST). Piloted by Aqeela Sherrills, NCST uses a combination of an evidence-based and community-driven approaches to violence reduction. Impactful programs include High Risk Interventionists, peers who bring lived experience and local credibility that makes them exceptionally effective at de-escalating potentially violent situations; Outreach Workers, also recruited from the community, who are embedded in neighborhoods to monitor safety, link residents to trauma recovery services, and have boosted community health through COVID-19; Safe Passage outreach staff who watch over children coming and going to schools near hot spots of violence; Crime Survivor Support Services which are provided in partnership with NJ Crime Victims’ Law Center; and advocates who facilitate the Victims Compensation Fund process for crime survivors.
HFNJ recognized the value of supporting NCST in the development of mental health services and therapeutic care for outreach workers. We are currently funding its Trauma Recovery Center (TRC), a national award-winning program designed to help victims of violent crime overcome barriers to accessing mental health treatment, health care, and legal resources in the acute aftermath of trauma. The TRC serves victims of violent crime, including survivors of physical assault, sexual assault, gunshot wounds, stabbings, domestic violence, and human trafficking.
This year more than 400 survivors engaged in therapy, and the Center has achieved 91 percent compliance with visits and strong clinical outcomes. There are many more people seeking counseling, which is amazing, but sadly the outpouring of need is consistent with recent data nationwide, which documents mental health disparities among People of Color, including more suicides, and difficulties of access due to structural inequities. At NCST the immediate need is to hire and train more clinical staff. Another challenge—but really an opportunity in terms of system change and health and racial equity—is to help younger organizations like NCST manage growth and develop a path to sustainability. We have been nimble in providing the support NCST needs as the organization grows and evolves.
HFNJ’s funding often changes as the needs in the community and these organizations shift. The Help Our Youth Be Better (The HUBB) after-school program is another example of this. The program engages at-risk youth ages 11 – 18 in performance-based art therapy and tutoring, but also links them to in-house counselors as many participants have unmet mental health needs. HFNJ was the first funder to support The HUBB when it received its nonprofit designation. I remember a call out of the blue from the founder, “What do I have to do to get a grant from The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey?” We spoke by phone; I listened and gave my best advice to help the organization get off the ground as a nonprofit.
The first grant helped establish mental health counseling, but it soon became clear as we continued to talk that this new nonprofit needed mentorship and help with basic operations and governance. We directed some funds to shore up systems and coached the team and connected them to other stakeholders. Many times, we weathered their ups and downs. The therapeutic work with young people has been amazing and transformative. Most recently HFNJ funds helped add mental health care for parents and trained and deployed youth ambassadors to get the word out on the street to both deescalate and link young people to the HUBB’s services. The Newark Police Department also signed up to send some first-time offenders to the program. In the last two years, several notable foundations have made important grants.
Can you share any key lessons learned for other funders considering similar investments?
Gun violence is a disease rooted in structural racism, poverty, and trauma—including multigenerational trauma. Without responsive, collaborative funding and leadership across multisectors, many at risk will remain isolated and vulnerable.
For any health funder grappling with whether gun violence prevention aligns with your mission, I offer that our investments have been most profound and impactful. Most importantly, I credit the tireless leaders, public and private professionals, volunteers, and residents who are at the frontlines every day.
Learn more about The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey at www.hfnj.org.