About GDLU
Guns Down, Life Up (GDLU) is an initiative that brings together public health experts and community leaders around New York City to stop the cycle of gun violence. Using a community-centered public health approach, GDLU engages partners across all boroughs, to prevent and interrupt violence and empower youth to fulfill their potential by leading safer, healthier lives.
Guns Down, Life Up programs across New York City share the following core services:
- Opportunities for youth to engage in positive activities such as sports, dance and the arts as part of a comprehensive violence prevention strategy.
- Mentorships to help guide youth toward positive choices.
- Interrupters and hospital responders – community members with prior experience with violence – connect with youth after an incidence of violence and, following the Cure Violence model, support them in finding alternatives to the cycle of retaliation.
- Solutions from community-based organizations across New York City to extend prevention and healing beyond the hospital walls and into communities.
Guns Down, Life Up (GDLU) is an initiative that brings together public health experts and community leaders around New York City to stop the cycle of gun violence. Using a community-centered public health approach, GDLU engages partners across all boroughs, to prevent and interrupt violence and empower youth to fulfill their potential by leading safer, healthier lives.
Guns Down, Life Up programs across New York City share the following core services:
- Opportunities for youth to engage in positive activities such as sports, dance and the arts as part of a comprehensive violence prevention strategy.
- Mentorships to help guide youth toward positive choices.
- Interrupters and hospital responders – community members with prior experience with violence – connect with youth after an incidence of violence and, following the Cure Violence model, support them in finding alternatives to the cycle of retaliation.
- Solutions from community-based organizations across New York City to extend prevention and healing beyond the hospital walls and into communities.
Our Programs
NYC Health + Hospitals is expanding its Hospital-Based Violence Intervention & Prevention Initiative in response to gun violence in our communities. Violence is a public health epidemic. At NYC Health + Hospitals, we believe that violence should be treated like any other communicable disease, and have developed innovative, results-driven programming to diagnose, treat, and end the cycle of gun violence.
Our programs take a three-pronged strategy to violence prevention, supporting youth through: (1) intervention and conflict mediation, (2) prevention and connecting youth to positive alternatives and mentoring, and (3) community outreach to raise awareness, change norms, and support communities to stop the cycle of violence. We work with young violent trauma patients in the hospital through a team approach of physicians, social workers, and community outreach workers, when they are most vulnerable and most receptive to change, to end the cycle of gun violence by stopping retaliatory violence and re-injury and supporting recovery and the healing process. We also help victims of gun violence and high-risk youth through preventative programs in our hospitals and communities.
We are working with our network of hospital-based violence intervention and prevention programs to ensure best practices are in place to best help our youth, while also planning to expand to include NYC Health + Hospitals’ trauma centers in communities with high rates of gun violence. Five programs are now up and running at NYC Health + Hospitals / Jacobi, Stand Up to Violence (SUV); NYC Health + Hospitals / Lincoln, Guns Down, Life Up (GDLU); NYC Health + Hospitals / Harlem, Harlem Crossroads; NYC Health + Hospitals / Kings County, Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI); and NYC Health + Hospitals / Woodhull.
We will not accept violence as an everyday reality for many young people in New York City. Our mission is to keep our communities healthy and safe. The work begins as soon as victims of violence enter through our doors and offer another opportunity to break the cycle and heal together. Your donations will help to provide supportive programming to victims of gun violence and their families. Your support can help enrich programming for at-risk youth and young adults and heal community members impacted by violence.