Academic Institution
Chicago, IL
USA
Email: gslutkin@uic.edu
Biographical Sketch: Dr. Gary Slutkin is a physician and epidemiologist, an innovator in violence reduction, and the Founder and Executive Director of CureViolence, formerly known as CeaseFire, a scientifically proven, public health approach to violence reduction which uses disease control and behavior change methods. CureViolence has been statistically demonstrated to reduce shootings and killings by 41% to 73% by three extensive independently funded and independently performed studies – one by the U.S. Department of Justice, and the other by Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr., referred to CureViolence as “a rational, data-driven, evidence-based, smart approach (to reducing violence)” “The World in 2009” edition of The Economist heralded CureViolence as "the approach that will come to prominence.” In 2013, Cure Violence was named the 9th best non-governmental organization (NGO) in the world by the Global Journal – and listed first among organizations dedicated to reducing violence.
Dr. Slutkin is an Ashoka Fellow, a Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a senior advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the 2009 Winner of the Search for Common Ground Award. He received his M.D. from the University of Chicago Pritzker School Of Medicine, and completed his internship, residency, and infectious disease control training at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital. He ran the Tuberculosis (TB) Program for San Francisco from 1981 to 1985; moved to Somalia to work on TB and cholera epidemics from 1985 to 1987; and was then recruited by the World Health Organization where he worked from 1987 to 1994 in over 20 countries, including leading the efforts – using behavior change methods - to reverse the AIDS epidemic in Uganda. He was then appointed Director of Intervention Development for WHO (global). Dr. Slutkin sees violence as an infectious process, and credits his WHO training and experiences in multiple countries to informing his understanding and approach to violence and behavior change, and specifically to Cure Violence’s results-driven and epidemic control approach.
The Cure Violence method is currently working in 15 cities in the U.S. and in countries on three continents including programs in UK, Trinidad, South Africa and Iraq. This new approach is being promoted by the National League of Cities, the National Governors Association, the White House, highlighted by the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee and the World Bank. Dr. Slutkin is also the Co-Founder of PeaceTXT, a new international effort to use mobile phones for violence reduction, being pilot tested in Kenya.
Dr. Slutkin’s work has been featured in Studs Terkel’s Will the Circle be Unbroken, and profiled in Blocking the Transmission, a Sunday New York Times Magazine cover story by bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, which was selected as the Best American Science Writing of 2009. The Interrupters, a documentary film about the work of Cure Violence, has won numerous international awards. Dr. Slutkin is currently working on a book regarding these new methods for understanding and reducing lethal violence.
Papers:
Gary Slutkin