Prevention chair urges systems approach, highlights counselor shortfall in New Hanover County

Kevin Blackburn, chair of the task force's prevention work group, summarized the group's goal as preventing gang involvement and acts of violence by addressing upstream root causes.

"Our goal is to prevent gang involvement, gang participation, and acts of violence," Blackburn said, describing a systems-based approach that brings together community health, government, research, enforcement and legal partners.

Blackburn said the work group is trying to avoid returning to short-lived efforts that dissolved when funding ended or political champions left office. "We want whatever we do to well outlast not just the task force, but ideally multiple administrations," he said.

The work group identified risk and protective factors across individual, family, school, peer and community domains and recommended grounding strategy at the individual level. Blackburn noted capacity gaps in schools, citing New Hanover County's ratio of "357 students for every school counselor" as an example of a systemic constraint the group wants to address.

Blackburn described strategic interventions the group will evaluate, including school-based programs, mentoring and workforce development, and pointed to model curricula such as Chicago's ECHO program, which he said is free and adaptable.

The prevention group flagged common barriers: funding and timelines, decision-makers reluctant to acknowledge gang problems publicly, and the need to make recommendations sustainable and evidence based. The group plans to develop metrics and performance indicators with the task force's data and innovation team so work groups can measure success from the start.

Next steps: the prevention work group will convert its findings into formal recommendations for the task force, including suggested metrics and implementation details to support sustainable programming.