SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Metropolitan Health District is hoping to scale back gun violence, sexual violence and youth violence by bringing group organizations and authorities entities collectively to develop a five-year plan.

The Violence Prevention Strategic Plan is a collaboration between a various set of organizations hoping to deal with gun violence, violence amongst youth, home violence and sexual violence.

Public Health Administrator Erica Haller-Stevenson is main the mission for Metro Health.

Haller-Stevenson stated every group concerned has a special objective, however everybody concerned needs to see San Antonio safer and more healthy.

“Everybody’s going in a slightly different direction, and that’s okay because everyone has a unique mission. However, there are places where we overlap in our missions and if we can harness that and focus on those together, we have a much greater chance of making a big impact on the community,” Haller-Stevenson stated.

San Antonio Youth for Christ is among the faith-based organizations hoping to deal with violence amongst youth.

Chief Ministry Officer Charles Skarin stated the church grew to become concerned within the plan after two teen congregants have been killed in separate shootings. Skarin stated Humberto, or Berto, was shot whereas strolling down the road and Manuel Ramos was shot and killed whereas hanging out together with his buddies.

“Both innocent youths,” Skarin stated. “It was right when the Uvalde shooting happened. And so it just seemed like one after another. All these teens are losing their lives and we can’t just stand back anymore.”

Gun violence is the main reason for demise amongst minority youth, Skarin stated.

San Antonio Youth for Christ can be concerned with the Youth Violence Coalition, which focuses on creating applications and companies to forestall and educate in opposition to youth violence.

Metro Health’s plan may also coincide with the San Antonio Police Department’s Violence Reduction Plan, which the University of Texas San Antonio helped facilitate. It primarily focuses on problem-oriented or hotspot policing. Part of the police division’s Violence Reduction Plan focuses on the foundation reason for crime and that’s the place Metro Health’s plan compliments it.

“It’s an opportunity for their law enforcement approach to tie in to our public health approach,” Haller-Stevenson stated.

The first step within the Violence Prevention Strategic Plan is to gather knowledge. According to Haller-Stevenson, a lot of the native knowledge surrounding the 4 sections of violence is incomplete.

“If we try to make decisions about interventions, programs, services without looking at the data, we’re probably going to go in the wrong direction,” Haller-Stevenson stated.

After accumulating the information, Metro Health is bringing it to the organizations concerned in order that they’ll develop methods, indicators of success and set benchmarks by the tip of August. Those methods will undergo a public remark section in August and September.

Haller-Stevenson stated this collaboration course of may also reveal how every group’s targets would possibly overlap.

“In addition to really tapping into what people know, it creates these connections between them and they work together in the future,” Haller -Stevenson stated.

Skarin stated he’s excited to collaborate with different organizations as a result of an identical effort was profitable in lowering teen being pregnant in San Antonio.

“So when we work together, we know there’s power in that. It’s already happened once. So that’s one of the reasons I’m hopefully excited that that can happen again,” Skarin stated. “As drastic as that was, this is even more because kids are literally dying out in our city and it’s getting worse.”