It Takes a Village: Moving from Unaligned Action to Collective Impact

For over two decades, violence has been understood as a public health problem. Despite a well-established and applicable public health framework, progress to address the entrenched violence that plagues many cities has been slow. We believe that progress can be effective only if it fully includes those most impacted by the violence. In this article, we describe an initiative to address one aspect of violence plaguing Wilmington: access to and possession of guns. Our initiative is driven by the lived experience of community members, builds on and expands an established collective impact effort to address gun violence, and focuses on the root causes of gun violence.