On Jan. 24, City Council unveiled its Violence Prevention Strategic Plan for 2024-2028 in San Antonio and Bexar County. The mission of the plan is to “stop violence from happening before it starts” through collaboration, research and community outreach.
Over the next four years, the City of San Antonio will be working in four public health priority areas, including violence among youth, gun violence, sexual violence and domestic violence to “prevent and intervene in violence in our community.”
The priority area of “Violence Among Youth” will tackle areas of youth-on-youth violence, bullying and cyberbullying within the school systems. The overall goal is to reduce rates of firearm-caused deaths, suicides and reports of being bullied, as well as create more supportive and safe spaces for youth.
Additionally, “Gun Violence” will target neighborhood-based gun violence and mass shootings in schools. The tactics they will be using to improve this area will be evaluating the impact of the open carry law and seeing how it affects Bexar County, addressing gun safety in the community, conducting research on how to prevent gun violence, creating anonymous tip lines for schools, etc. The long-term goal of this plan is to improve access to services and support for victims and survivors and reduce the rate of shootings and homicides.
Tactics devoted to “Sexual Violence” will work to eliminate the “stigma related to sexual assault, raising awareness of resources and increasing reporting of assault.” The prevention of sexual violence against adults will be implemented through improved “access to services and support for victims/survivors.”
The last priority area will serve as “Domestic Violence” and will fight against intimate partner violence and child abuse or neglect. To help support this area, they will provide more applicable resources and services for mental health and well-being, as well as more support for victims and survivors. The overall objective in this area is to reduce rates of intimate partner homicides, child fatalities related to abuse and neglect and the rate of assault in partners and families.
The Violence Prevention Strategic Plan is also correlated with the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District’s (Metro Health) five-year SA Forward Plan, “which addresses key priority areas such as violence prevention, access to care, data and technology infrastructure, food insecurity and nutrition, health equity and social justice and mental health and community resilience.”
The two have a mutual connection through public health and safety for the city of San Antonio and Bexar County. The mission of the SA Forward plan is “to prevent illness, promote healthy behaviors and protect against health hazards throughout our community through education, collaboration and key services.” It spans from 2021-2026 to “protect and improve the health of our community so that all people thrive in healthy, safe communities.”
Over the next five years of the SA Forward Plan, Metro Health will be working in six public health priority areas, including access to care, data and technology infrastructure, food insecurity and nutrition, health equity and social justice, mental health and community resilience and violence prevention.
According to the SA Forward Plan, “higher levels of unaddressed trauma are associated with adverse health outcomes and higher mortality rates, especially Alzheimer’s Disease and suicide. Additionally, law enforcement and corrections staff report high workplace trauma levels and experience higher levels of suicide than the general population.”
For more information on the four priority areas addressed in the Violence Prevention Strategic Plan, visit here.
To learn more about the SA Forward plan, visit here.
