Applying an Empowerment Theory Approach to Facilitate Community-Driven Gun Violence Prevention Planning

Gun violence is a global issue with substantial psychological, social, and health impacts requiring the integration of community voices, especially those with lived experience, into research, implementation, and evaluation. The objective of this paper is to describe how a community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership used think tanks and the empowerment-theory based community forum to create dialogue between researchers and community members and form action plans to address gun violence. The Violence as a Health Disparity workgroup held two "think tanks" to gather academic and community members to discuss research, lived experiences, and community-based and driven solutions for gun violence impacting North Carolina. Think tanks were structured using the empowerment-theory based community forum method, which guided participants through Freire's three stages of listening, dialogue, and action; qualitative data were analyzed using constant comparison. Seventy-two total participants (68% community partners) attended the think tanks, generating twenty discussion themes, four proposed community-engaged research projects, and six submitted grants related to gun violence prevention, promotion, and response. This project shows how Freire's empowerment theory can be applied to gun violence prevention and response to further community voice and strengthen community-academic relationships. The think tanks facilitated academic and community exchange of information, created a space for dialogue among shareholders and constituents across many positionalities related to gun violence, and acted as a successful method to generate action. These think tanks showcase an important potential method for increasing dialogue with, research co-led by, and equity for communities impacted by gun violence.