Safety Surprise

Installing new doors and windows and cleaning up trash and weeds at abandoned houses in Philadelphia led to a substantial drop in nearby gun violence, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia Mailman School and the University of Pennsylvania. For this study, 258 abandoned houses across Philadelphia were put into one of three groups. The first received new windows and doors, trash cleanup, and weeding; the second received trash cleanup and weeding only; the third received no interventions. When compared to areas around homes that received no intervention, blocks around homes that received the full intervention showed a 13.12 percent reduction in gun assaults and a 6.96 percent reduction in shootings. (Trash cleanup and weeding alone showed no change in gun violence.) “This is powerful scientific evidence showing that place-based interventions can improve health and safety, even for some of our most challenging crises like gun violence,” says Charles Branas,

PhD, Gelman Professor and chair of Epidemiology.