Community-centered programs to prevent youth and young adult violence

Estimating the Impact of Alternative Crisis Response Models on Community Violence

This project will try to see if programs like co-responder teams, alternative response, and community violence interventions reduce violent injuries among youth and young adults in U.S. cities and counties.

Quick facts

• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 15 (estimated)
• Sex: All
• Sponsor: NYU Langone Health (Academic / other)
• Locations: 1 site (New York, New York)
• Trial ID: NCT07494019 on ClinicalTrials.gov

What this trial studies

This observational project will describe how community-centered safety models (co-response, alternative response, and community violence intervention programs) are implemented across U.S. municipalities using implementation-science methods. It will estimate impacts on fatal and nonfatal violent injury and some justice-related outcomes using quasi-experimental approaches, including pooled augmented synthetic control designs. The team will also explore operational and contextual factors tied to stronger or weaker program effects to understand when and where these models work best.

Who should consider this trial

Good fit: Ideal candidates are U.S. cities or counties that implemented a single, clearly defined community-centered safety program with documented launch date, scope, and at least 24 months of pre-implementation and 12 months of post-implementation outcome data.

Not a fit: Jurisdictions with unclear program boundaries, overlapping or multiple concurrent interventions, unstable reporting practices, or insufficient outcome data are unlikely to provide useful evidence or directly benefit from this analysis.

Why it matters

Potential benefit: If successful, the findings could identify which community-centered approaches most reduce violent injuries among youth and young adults and guide policymakers on where to scale or refine programs.

How similar studies have performed: Local and program-level evaluations of similar co-response and community violence interventions have shown promising but mixed results, and a pooled quasi-experimental national analysis is relatively novel.

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion Criteria for Jurisdiction/Sites:

1. Intervention modality clarity: A single, identifiable CCSM-Co-Response (CRM), Alternative Response (ARM), or Community Violence Intervention (CVI)-implemented at city/county level.
2. Documented launch date \& scope: Public or official documentation specifying program start date, catchment, operating hours, staffing, eligibility, and core activities.
3. Observation window: ≥24 months pre-implementation and ≥12 months post-implementation of outcome data (monthly preferred; annual acceptable for fatal outcomes).
4. Outcomes coverage: Availability of primary outcomes (fatal and nonfatal violent injury) and at least one secondary justice outcome at the jurisdiction level.
5. Data quality: Stable geographic boundaries, consistent reporting practices, and no catastrophic breaks that preclude credible counterfactual fit.
6. Donor comparability: Jurisdiction characteristics and data cadence compatible with a pooled augmented synthetic control design (i.e., can be matched to a synthetic control and included in permutation tests).

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Pilot-only or indeterminate programs: Short-lived pilots, ambiguous or multi-modality rollouts where treatment timing or content cannot be reliably defined.
2. Severe data discontinuity: Major boundary changes, reporting suspensions, coding overhauls, or dataset gaps that undermine time-series integrity (e.g., prolonged outages during system migration) and cannot be addressed with standard remedies.
3. Overlapping major interventions: Concurrent, poorly measured citywide initiatives (e.g., sweeping policy bundles) that coincide with the CCSM start and make identification infeasible.
4. Insufficient pre-period: \<24 months pre-implementation data for primary outcomes.
5. Incompatible cadence/aggregation: Outcomes only available at spatial or temporal units that cannot be aligned with other sites or donors.

Where this trial is running

New York, New York

• NYU Langone Health — New York, New York, United States (Recruiting)

Study contacts

• Principal investigator: Bennett Allen, PhD — NYU Langone Health
• Study coordinator: Bennett Allen, PhD

Conditions Community-Centered Safety