Though homicides have been dropping annually since 2021, progress on gun violence prevention should not be taken for granted, urged speakers at the Gun Violence Prevention Forum on Thursday. The annual event, hosted by Northwell Health, took place in New York City.
“Persistence is important, thinking long-term is important, not getting tired of the issue is important,” Michael Dowling, CEO emeritus of Northwell, said in opening remarks at the event. Dowling stepped down as CEO last fall.
Dowling, who has long had a reputation for speaking his mind regardless of political consequences, lamented the Trump administration’s attacks on public health, science and government institutions.
“But that should not deter us, because these things will change,” he said. “Good people will win at the end of the day.”
Throughout the event, speakers emphasized the importance of partnership in prevention efforts. JT Timpson, managing director of community violence initiatives at the Roca Impact Institute, spoke about how collaboration has yielded encouraging improvements in Baltimore. Part of local cross-sector partnership has been accepting, without judgment, that high-risk populations live a certain lifestyle. But that does not mean they should be treated with less care or attention.
“The quality of service needs to be the same as if this person was not high-risk,” Timpson said. “Equity is equity.”
In Baltimore, working with the police department has proven to be a positive thing, Timpson added. That has been possible because of clarity around each stakeholder’s role in the efforts. “The problems in Baltimore weren’t just community problems. They were systematic problems that went over our heads,” Timpson said, referring to police corruption as one example.
Community violence intervention (CVI) readiness should include organizational culture, partnerships, programming and data, said Ruth Abaya, M.D., senior director of health systems and CVI integration at the Health Alliance for Violence Prevention (HAVI), said. “That construct captures a lot of what we need to bake into the health system structure so that we can drive meaningful change,” Abaya said.
She added it is key for strategies to be embedded in a health system’s operations and go beyond being a cause just one person or team cares about. The HAVI is an organization that fosters hospital and community collaborations to prevent violence.
The importance of gathering evidence was also a theme at the event. Abaya cited a recent Boston University study that measured the impact of Boston Medical Center’s Violence Intervention Advocacy Program. The hospital-based intervention program, one of dozens in the country, offers post-discharge support to survivors of violence, such as mental health and family support services, connections to housing, food and more. Consistent engagement with the program could reduce the likelihood of being revictimized or committing violence by 50%, the study found.
RELATED
Fierce 50: Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education
This study was particularly meaningful because it offered a new approach to studying positive interventions in the field. It is difficult to conduct controlled trials with gun violence victims, Abaya said, as some feel it is unethical to randomize a cohort not to receive these interventions when they could so enormously benefit from them.
Nancy Fishman, senior director at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, identified several ways philanthropy can play a role in gun violence prevention. Foundations can sponsor innovation, which invites other stakeholders like the government, hospitals and businesses. They can support leadership development. They can back research. They can raise awareness through communications and advocacy efforts. And they can support emergency and rapid response initiatives.
At the same time, she and other speakers acknowledged that the Trump administration’s slashing of more than $1 billion in federal grants for gun violence prevention, research and public safety programs leaves a serious gap.
“Private philanthropy is not going to fill that gap,” Fishman said. “It’s just not enough money.”
JAMA, the medical journal, hosted its third summit on reducing gun violence in 2025. It was a closed-door event with 60 thought leaders across sectors to chart a road map to substantial reductions in firearm harms by 2040.
“The idea here is to try to get at solutions,” Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, M.D., Ph.D., JAMA’s editor-in-chief, said on a panel Thursday. Five calls to action emerged from the JAMA summit, she added, which led to more research being published on those issues. “Our job … is to publish the evidence,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
Meanwhile, EHR giant Epic has its own work group for firearm prevention and has worked with a slew of partners to develop specific tools within the platform, per Jackie Gerhart, M.D., chief medical officer at Epic Systems.
For instance, Epic worked with Northwell to embed a screening tool into the foundational software of Epic. The company is also considering recording tools that can help leverage the rich data that live in medical records to help gather more data. And Epic is also focused on ordering tools to ensure things like gun locks can easily be provided at the point of care.
In the future, Epic hopes to make it easier to flag resources and to refer to community-based organizations for support on gun violence cases.
“I would love to see existing resources on gun safety and different resources that are in the community embedded in an after-visit summary,” Gerhart said.
“We are at a crossroads,” former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived a mass shooting in 2011, said in brief remarks at the event. “We can be on the right side of the history.”