Orleans Parish (LA) Profile

Team Profile Summary

New Orleans, Louisiana is an ideal setting for exploring new approaches to youth violence interventions for a number of reasons. The city-level YRBSS results for 2005 indicate that New Orleans youth exceed the rest of the U.S. youth population in rates of carrying guns (9.0% vs. 5.4%), being threatened or injured by a weapon at school (15% vs. 8%), participating in a physical fight (46% vs. 36%), and being involved with dating violence (21% vs. 9%). In 2005, the youth of New Orleans were exposed to one of the largest national disasters in U.S. history, which provides the unique opportunity to study youth violence in the context of a natural disaster. While the NIH project will focus on Violence prevention in grade Pre-K through 3rd grade and assets management and/or peer mentoring in 4th through 9th grades, the “Place Matters” Violence Project will focus on: Assets Management, community mobilization, policy intervention and quality education among students in grade 10th through 12th.

Team Profile Details

Problem Statement

Many of the current social challenges in New Orleans have resulted from the erosion of family and social support networks in the wake of the flood. Youth are lacking safe places to live and play, environments that are conducive to learning, and positive outlets for social development. The community is interested in building these resources back up as part of re-development efforts.

Team Objectives

  • Establish a youth violence intervention working group;
  • Develop a data base including all organizations addressing violence-related issues in the city ;
  • Determine the target area and the age group to be targeted;
  • Determine the source of the problem using different sources including interviews, surveys, focus groups, Medline search, news paper, etc
  • Assess existing violence-related policies; Determine crime-related concentration areas using GIS maps;
  • Work with the school systems to determine attendance rates as well as dropout rates for each school;
  • Create a data base of business partners;
  • Create a plan to analyze the program’s effectiveness;
  • Plan for a summit to address the violence as a social issue, influenced by social policy.

For more information and to become involved, please contact:

Team Lead: Dr. Andre Perry
Email: aperry@loyno.edu
Phone: 504-865-2782