Statewide Offices of Gun Violence Prevention Take Root

In January, Wisconsin became the latest state to create an Office of Violence Prevention (OVP). Wisconsin’s OVP will be funded with $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds and will award grants to school districts, law enforcement agencies, non-profits, and local governments to support gun violence reduction initiatives across the state.

This announcement comes as Wisconsin recovers from the tragedy at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison in December 2024, faces rising firearms suicide rates, and struggles to address chronic community gun violence that for decades has disproportionately harmed Black and Brown residents in Madison and other cities statewide. 

None of these challenges are specific to Wisconsin. On-campus school shootings, while a tiny fraction of overall gun violence in America, have proliferated nationwide. Firearms suicide has been climbing steadily for the last decade and is climbing fastest among young people of color. While there have been significant nationwide declines in gun homicide in recent years — appropriately met with relief in places like Baltimore and Philadelphia, PA— profoundly disproportionate disparities still exist in Black and Brown communities. As of January 20, the nation faces these challenges without a national Office of Gun Violence Prevention. That office, established in September 2023, is defunct. 

That’s why it’s encouraging to see states taking an affirmative and assertive role in tackling these critical public health and public safety challenges. Since 2019, more than a dozen states—now including Wisconsin—have established OVPs to better coordinate and implement statewide policies and practices to reduce gun violence, bolster prevention efforts with infrastructure and sustained resources, and to elevate the importance of gun violence in public discourse and within state government. Last year, the Joyce Foundation released A Landscape Analysis of State Offices of Gun Violence Prevention to better understand this trend. 

The Wisconsin OVP office was created with the partnership of several Joyce grantees, including the Medical College of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE) Educational Fund. These organizations have had a longstanding commitment to addressing violence as a public health issue and worked with policymakers to create the Wisconsin office. 

“The Office of Violence Prevention, working collaboratively with state officials, community leaders, and Wisconsin’s violence prevention coalitions, will mean we can take enormous strides forward in building a future where every Wisconsinite feels safe in their home, neighborhood, and school,” added Nick Matuszewski, WAVE Educational Fund’s Associate Executive Director.

Other OVP advances nationwide include: 

New State Offices Announced or Re-established

• Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro formally reauthorized Pennsylvania’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention to work within the state’s Commission on Crime and Delinquency. It is mandated to convene an advisory group, develop a gun violence prevention plan, and create a Gun Violence Data Dashboard. 
• California’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which had previously been created by executive action, was enacted into law this past September. Soon after its status became cemented, the office published its inaugural report on the state’s fight against the ghost gun crisis. 

Funding Opportunities

• The OVPs in New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois all received state-level grants via the U.S. Department of Justice’s CVIPI award program to support their work. The next round of CVIPI grants are pending announcement and it is possible that states will again be eligible applicants. 

Research

• Researchers at the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative at the University of Colorado, in partnership with Colorado’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention, recently published a case study of their partnership, demonstrating the value of this type of partnership for other states with OVPs.  
• Illinois recently launched a new dashboard detailing violent deaths and firearm-related injuries in the state. The new dashboard will provide detailed information at the county level, including the types of incidents, weapon type and where victims reside. Illinois joins more than 15 states using public-facing dashboards to release firearms injury and/or death data. 
• The Injury Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the Mapping Injury, Overdose, and Violence Dashboard displaying data on deaths from drug overdose, suicide, and homicide. It includes information down to census tracts using final and provisional death data received from states. This data comes from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), compiled by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Almost all states have opted in to display all levels of data (or at the state and or our county level), and researchers, advocates, policymakers and the public can connect with their own state Departments of Public Health on how to access these data. 
• The State Administrators Policy Network (SAPN), convened quarterly by the Giffords Center for Violence Intervention, provides a landing space for state leaders who create and implement policy specific to reducing community gun violence – whether they represent a formal state-based Office of Violence Prevention or not. Similarly, the National OVP Network offers targeted support and convening space specifically for state-level Offices of Violence Prevention.

Even the best-established among these offices are relatively new, lean, and have expansive work ahead – but we are encouraged to see the momentum and great potential for advancing and implementing effective gun violence prevention.