Moving the Mission: Field Insights from the 2026 CVI Conference
The Community Violence Intervention Conference is the nation’s largest convening dedicated to advancing community-led, non-punitive approaches to reducing gun violence. Each year, it brings together frontline interventionists, community leaders, researchers, healthcare professionals, policymakers, funders, government partners, survivors, and others working to strengthen community safety.
Moving the Mission: Field Insights from the 2026 CVI Conference
At a time when communities face continued funding uncertainty, growing expectations, and pressure to demonstrate impact, opportunities to learn directly from one another matter more than ever. CVI is practiced locally, but many of the questions facing the field are shared across cities: how to sustain the workforce, strengthen organizations, build effective partnerships, generate useful evidence, and remain accountable to the communities the work exists to serve.
Over two days, participants exchanged strategies, challenged assumptions, built relationships, and explored approaches spanning street outreach, hospital-based violence intervention, behavioral health, research, policy, workforce development, and organizational leadership.
This report synthesizes what participants shared through conference sessions, evaluations, discussion boards, and other conference app engagement. Like the 2025 report, it has two goals:
- To share ideas, practices, and approaches that participants found useful and could adapt in their own communities.
- To reflect on the state of the field by tracing the priorities, questions, and opportunities that emerged throughout the conference.
By examining what participants gravitated toward, what they wanted more of, and what questions they carried into conversations with one another, this report offers a snapshot of a field increasingly focused on how to strengthen and sustain the work.
CHAMPIONS FOR PEACE
Our Champions for Peace series honors the people working on the ground to stop violence in their communities before it happens. If someone comes to mind as you read this, take a moment to nominate them.
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