For the past year and a half, Operation Respond has provided services to those at the highest risk of community gun violence in Baltimore. Operation Respond is one of several violence prevention programs that could benefit from a new strategy in Maryland that would leverage state funding, public health strategies, data, coordination, and community input to reduce gun violence, The Trace reports. Enter the Center for Firearm Violence Prevention and Intervention, first proposed by Maryland Governor Wes Moore in January. Maryland is the first to take up the Biden administration’s call to create statewide offices for gun violence prevention. “I’m hoping that this new office will be receptive to the voices on the ground so they can make investments into the real causes, the real issues, and the communities and people who have been exposed to gun violence,” said Dante Johnson, who runs Operation Respond as director of Community Safety Initiatives at the Living Classrooms Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
From 2018 to 2022, Maryland had the eighth-highest rate of firearm homicide in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Like most of the country, Maryland saw rates of gun violence surge in 2020 and 2021, and begin to decline in 2022. Advocates hope the new center, which should become operational after October 1, will help lower those numbers. The center will approach gun violence reduction primarily through a public health lens, facilitating collaboration between state and local government agencies, hospitals, and community-based violence intervention programs.“ Our public health approach to violence prevention and intervention requires centering health as the main goal by addressing factors that will decrease injuries and death,” Health Department Secretary Laura Herrera Scott said when the bill was being considered earlier this year. A public health approach defines and monitors a problem, identifies risk and protective factors, develops and tests preventative strategies, and works toward widespread adoption of those strategies. The new center’s focus on public health marks a shift from the state’s tendency to rely on law enforcement solutions.
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