A $6.5 million federal award was slow to arrive. It was delaying a five-year project to research and decrease youth violence in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood. The program is finally taking off this week Del Elliot said, “We should be back on track by late fall.” Del Elliot is the founding director of the Center for Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The award was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Five other communities are also receiving funding including Baltimore and Chicago. Researchers lead the Montbello project from Boulder campus and the CU School of Medicine in a partnership with the CDC. One of the project investigators from Children’s Hospital said, “My goal is of getting the health care community involved in intervention and prevention.” Dr. Eric Sigel says, “it’s a rare thing to have such a partnership, but it presents a real opportunity for change.” The first set of data may be available by June and will help the boards determine what kinds of programs are required to address problem areas. Elliot said the plan is to have neighborhood volunteers on the ground in March administering community surveys.

The goal of the project is to gather all the research from not only adults, but kids in grades 4-12 to see what they think might work to curb youth violence. They’ve looked at some of the other projects that didn’t work “including boot camps, police D.A.R.E. programs, neighborhood watches, and scared-straight programs.” In discovering the ineffectiveness of these programs,  “Researchers at CU say there is evidence to suggest that effective and cost-effective programs include nursing home visitation programs, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and life-skills training” could be more effective. Elliot said, “When these program work and can pay for themselves, that’s how these programs sell themselves.”

Look at the statistics of the cases of aggravated assault alone in the  year of 2011, there were 123 cases total in the Montbello neighborhood as opposed to 15 cases total in the Denver Cherry Creek neighborhood. This is an 88% higher assault rate, which tells us there is clearly a violence issue in the Montbello neighborhood. Whether or not this lends itself to youth violence is the question, but either way, the goal to curb youth violence in this neighborhood is worth the research and this investigation.