The Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC)
Vision: The Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC) will create safer communities by reducing the number of violent injuries and deaths in targeted communities in Philadelphia.   
Mission:  To design, implement and evaluate programs that enhance resiliency and reduce the frequency and impact of youth violence, injury and death through mutually beneficial and sustainable collaborations between scientists and community members.
Goals:
1.    Advance existing approaches and knowledge through rigorous community-based participatory research
2.    Build community capacity to engage in youth violence prevention efforts and reduce the negative impacts of violence
3.    Conduct effective primary violence prevention efforts in the community
4.    Create an effective and sustainable organizational structure through which we conduct community-participatory youth violence prevention research programs and disseminate these methods and results to a broad range of violence prevention stakeholders.
5.    Build a model system for information flow that effectively transfers information both to and from community settings.
The Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC) brings together academic institutions and community-based organizations to conduct community-based participatory research through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). The goal is to learn which programs are most effective in preventing violence among youth.  This Center of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention is one of two U-PACE centers that have been funded by the CDC across the country and the first to be funded in Philadelphia. The other U-PACE center is Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN.  Ten other Academic Centers of Excellence (ACE) are already doing similar work around the country. For more information about the CDC’s ACE and U-PACE centers, visit http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/yvactivites.htm.
This new Center is significant for several reasons.  First: the approach focuses on primary prevention.  In other words, the goal is to start early to prevent violence from scarring the lives of young people. Second, it brings together academic institutions and community-based organizations, through the Philadelphia Area Research Community Coalition (PARCC), as partners sharing equally in the planning, leadership, analysis and dissemination of research results. Third, it brings together academic institutions from across the city, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Drexel University, Temple University and University of Pennsylvania to work in collaborative fashion to address this critical public health issue. The individual healthcare centers within the collaborative will share equally in the planning and dissemination of research results. Although the Center’s administrative activities will be based at Children’s Hospital, the actual research efforts will take place in community venues where youth and families naturally congregate.
The PCVPC supports a central research project that will take promising models of primary prevention programs for youth and adapt them for use in the West/Southwest Philadelphia community in partnership with community members and community-based organizations.  The Center also funds pilot research projects that seek to understand how violence affects the lives of these young people.  A key goal of the Center will be to learn how to best share research results with the community and incorporate community feedback into the design of research.  The Centers is founded on a commitment to ensuring the long-term sustainability of violence prevention programs in the community. In addition to partnering with West and Southwest Philadelphia-based community programs, the Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center will also link with city-wide violence prevention projects like Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Injury Reporting and Intervention System, and the Youth Violence Reduction Project, in order to balance the Center’s efforts with those who are also working to engender and sustain safer Philadelphia communities.
From the inception of PCVPC, the academic representatives have joined with members of the Philadelphia Area Research Community Coalition (PARCC) as co-investigators and core directors.  PARCC is a coalition of community-based organizations whose mission is to “establish and facilitate effective long-term and sustainable research partnerships between community organizations and institutions that have a shared vision and leadership to change and improve the health of the community in W/SW Philadelphia.”
The current collaborators in the PCVPC represent unique and diverse areas of community and academic expertise.  The Center has four Cores: Administrative, Research, Information, and Communication & Dissemination.
Administrative Core Directors:
•    Joel Fein, MD, MPH, will be the Director and Principal Investigator of the PCVPC.  He is a pediatric emergency physician at CHOP and a researcher whose body of work spans the topic of youth violence, domestic violence, traumatic stress and mental health;
•    Rose Cheney, PhD is the Executive Director of The Firearm and Injury Center at Penn (FICAP). She has a long background in public health and community interventions for substance abuse and violence prevention, as well as in emergency medical services;
•    Tara Hayden, MHSA, is a founding member of PARCC.  She is an experienced health care administrator/consultant with particular expertise in building collaborations with communities and developing community capacity to participate in research.
Research Core Directors
•    Therese Richmond, PhD, CRNP, FAAN is a member of the nursing and medical faculty at The University of Pennsylvania and a co-founder of FICAP.  She has an interest in the nexus of psychological responses and violent injury;
•    Alice Hausman, PhD, MPH is the Chair of the Department of Public Health at Temple University. She has extensive experience in evaluation, participatory research, and connections between research and practice;
•    Terry Guerra, MS is the Director of Community Development and Human Resources at AchieveAbility, a member organization of PARCC.
Information Core Directors
•    Charles Branas, PhD, is a noted injury epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania  with interests in youth violence, suicide, and the relationship between alcohol availability and injury;
•    Thomas Ten Have, PhD, MPH is a biostatistician the University of Pennsylvania.  He specializes in statistical analyses to accommodate patient preferences and adaptive treatment regimes;
•    Alia Walker, BS is a member of PARCC.  She is a Community Activities Specialist and Site Director at Shaw Middle School for Children’s Service, Inc, and Founder of Women of Peace, a Philadelphia-based anti-violence association.
Communication and Dissemination (C & D) Core Directors
•    Stephen Leff, PhD is a psychologist at CHOP and a national expert in using community partnership-based methodology to conduct aggression prevention programs and measurement development. Dr. Leff will also be the Principal Investigator of the centerpiece research project.
•    John Rich, MD, MPH is Chair of the Department of Health Management & Policy at the Drexel School of Public Health. He employs quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods to urban health interventions;
•    Thomas Henry is an original member of PARCC, Chair of the Southwest Action Coalition (SWAC) and the President of the Kingsessing Recreation Advisory Council. He has over 30 years of experiences as a community advocate, activist, and service provider in Philadelphia.
Community Liaison Consultant
•    Nicole Thomas, MBA, PARCC
PCVPC Associates:
•    Alexandra Hanlon, PhD, biostatistician at Temple University, Evaluator, Centerpiece Project
•    Bernadette Hohl, Temple Department of Public Health, Research Assistant, Centerpiece Projec
•    Anne Teitelman, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Co-I, Pilot Project
•    Duane Thomas, PhD, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, Co-I, Centerpiece Project
•    Douglas Wiebe, PhD, University of Pennsylvania Department of Biostatistics & Epidemiology, Co-I, Pilot Project
External Advisory Committee (EAC)
Paul Fink M.D.
Jeane Ann Grisso, MD, MSc
Ira Harkavy PhD
Stephen Hargarten, MD, MPH
Jerry Johnson MD
William Laufer JD, PhD
Karin Rhodes MD, MS
John Templeton Jr. MD