Changing Youth Narratives on Firearm Violence ("Run It Up") Intervention

The Run It Up project is an experimental, theory-driven effort to address a specific connection between structural factors, youth identity development, and violence, where structural factors in some communities may limit adolescent beliefs about potential life-trajectories ("possible selves"), and foreground potential trajectories that include violence as integral. The intervention seeks to counter that dynamic by: 1) identifying alternative, non-violent identity trajectories that have attributes meaningful for youth and actualizing those trajectories through a community support structure; and 2) developing and disseminating multiple media products featuring narratives about these alternative trajectories. The goal is to change the calculation of possible selves for adolescents in the identity development stage through the introduction, and actualization, of desirable, tangible trajectories that do not involve violence or pro-violence norms, resulting in a reduction of youth involvement in firearm violence. The intervention and research is being conducted through a partnership between the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health and the Washington, DC community of Washington Highlands, and is funded through a grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). In the first phase, formative research was completed to identify attributes and alternative non-violent trajectories, determine intervention elements, develop an intervention "brand" representing the attributes, develop a baseline-follow-up survey measuring theoretical mediators/moderators, outcomes, and other potential influencing factors, and identify community data to be used for a time-series analysis. Now in the second phase, the baseline data from a sample of community youth and parents/guardians are currently being collected prior to implementing the intervention. Evaluation is a two group, quasi-experimental community cohort design using survey and community-level data.