As a part of our ongoing policy work in rural eastern North Carolina, we hold monthly sessions in which we listen to our community to identify priority issues and then fuse community knowledge, international best practices, and local connections to solve them.

We focused our April 2024 policy listening session on how we might use a public health approach to reduce gun violence. ROI is co-facilitating a process led by Rocky Mount Police Department Chief Robert Hassell to build an upstream approach to preventing gun violence. We used this policy listening session as a way to bring community voices to that effort, in line with ROI’s stated goal of being a bridge between our community and state/local policymakers.

Discussion highlights:

• We brainstormed touchpoints where potential perpetrators and/or victims of violent crime could be reached before and after crimes are committed, including: community colleges, school counselors, hospitals (during voluntary and involuntary commitments, as well as after violence), Medicaid, food programs like Meals on Wheels, and youth programs
  • There was agreement that these efforts are currently lacking: “I can’t recall going to any health care platform where they are lifting up violence prevention”
  • “Not everyone can afford the Y – we need these programs to be more accessible.”
  • We also discussed transportation as a major barrier to the accessibility of these programs

• There is a strong desire to link perpetrators and victims of violent crime to mental and physical health resources that they can access in order to prevent recurrence of crime.
  • We need to both connect people with resources they can access and follow up with them, as it is not always easy for someone facing challenges in day-to-day life to access health resources on their own initiative

• We have a shortage of community health workers, and addressing that shortage could play a large role in reducing violence.
  • One attendee teaches a virtual class for community health workers across the state, and we discussed the need for Edgecombe and Nash counties to provide more incentives for community health workers to train and stay in our community. We discussed Buncombe County as a possible model for this.
  • “We may have 1-2 community health workers, but we don’t have enough.”