Violence doesn’t affect just one person. It ripples through survivors, families and entire communities, shaping health and wellbeing for generations. Through its Community Investment Fund (CIF), Endeavor Health is investing in local nonprofits that work to help prevent community violence, provide care to those impacted and improve quality of life.
Progress is real and measurable through these partnerships. In Chicago’s northside neighborhoods, homicides fell by 50% and shootings by 40% in 2025—just one example of the momentum building across Chicagoland. Organizations like ONE Northside, Northwest Center Against Sexual Assault and Shelter & Family Services are leading the way, along with many other organizations, and driving meaningful change.
Here’s how these partnerships help prevent violence, support survivors and create safer futures.
Understanding the ripple of violence
Community violence has a profound impact, like a ripple in the water. At the moment of impact, community members caught directly in the violence experience physical harm. In addition, those exposed to violence, including families and witnesses, often experience distress and health impacts, including increased risk for chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes and hypertension.
Concerns over violence also change community behavior. It may result in avoiding outdoor activities, avoiding walking down the street to a store and changes in eating habits. It curbs the neighborhood's business and economy. The ripples start with those directly affected and quickly spread to the community, creating a repeating cycle.
Endeavor Health’s role as an interrupter and anchor
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to help address and prevent violence. Endeavor Health begins by acting as an interrupter in the immediate aftermath, providing urgent physical care alongside trauma-informed mental health support. This first response helps stabilize patients and creates a foundation for recovery.
That care continues well beyond the crisis. Trauma-informed services can reduce the risk of revictimization and help survivors rebuild trust, connection and stability in their daily lives. Mental health support also improves long-term health outcomes and strengthens engagement with care and community systems.
Endeavor Health also serves as a community anchor across the region. As one of the largest employers in the area, it supports local economies through intentional hiring and purchasing decisions that keep resources within local neighborhoods. These investments enhance community stability and reduce the underlying conditions that can contribute to violence.
Breaking the cycle of violence and retaliation
ONE Northside focuses on community engagement and community-based interventions using a public health approach. The organization works through trusted community partners and outreach teams to focus on individuals and areas most at risk on Chicago’s North Side.
Its team of street outreach workers, victim advocates and case managers is consistently present in neighborhoods, building relationships and working with current and former gang members. This presence allows ONE Northside to intervene early and help prevent retaliatory violence. When conflicts arise, its team works to mediate and de-escalate before situations worsen.
The team is successful because its members are highly trained in peace mediation, trauma-informed communication and conflict resolution. Over time, they build trust with community members, making their interventions welcomed and effective. Their work focuses on breaking cycles of violence by building connections and trust.
These efforts are showing results. In 2025, shootings declined 47% in Rogers Park and 68% in Uptown.
Financial health helps reduce violence
ONE Northside also works to help reduce risk factors before violence occurs. They recognize that financial health and public safety are closely connected. One major risk factor is financial stress, which is linked to anxiety, depression and poor decision-making.
Khalil Cromwell, ONE Northside’s lead outreach worker, created a financial empowerment course that now, thanks to Endeavor Health’s CIF award, has expanded and now trains more than 80 people each year. As a formerly incarcerated individual, Khalil knows from firsthand experience the difficulties of rebuilding one’s finances during re-entry. His experience shaped the program’s focus on practical tools for financial stability. At the end of the course, participants receive $200 along with financial education. This combination of resources and learning is helping participants build stability and move forward.
Endeavor to Heal
ONE Northside also partners with Endeavor Health through the Endeavor to Heal initiative, led by Dr. Ramon Solhkhah, Endeavor Health’s head of psychiatry. The program connects victims of violence with the full range of proactive, inclusive care that Endeavor Health offers to create a system that aims to break cycles of violence. ONE Northside connects victims of violence with “peer navigators” who help them through the difficult process of navigating after-care, while Endeavor Health provides world-class trauma-informed wraparound services.
It is another example of how Endeavor Health is partnering in prevention and breaking the cycle of violence through coordinated care.
Healing from violence
Another nonprofit organization leading the way in community violence prevention is Northwest Center Against Sexual Assault (NWCASA), which works to end sexual harm through prevention, intervention and advocacy for healing and social change. The organization’s services support anyone who identifies as a survivor of sexual harm, including those affected by coercion, harassment and workplace violence.
The need for these services is significant. In 2025, NWCASA answered 628 crisis hotline calls, provided trauma counseling to 130 clients and reached 3,500 people through prevention education. NWCASA’s prevention work begins early, starting in pre-K with lessons on safe adults and continues through high school.
Their educational programs focus on consent, healthy relationships and community strength. Through a “train-the-trainer” model, educators are empowered to continue teaching these lessons in schools. Under Erin’s Law, NWCASA helps ensure that children receive developmentally appropriate education on recognizing and reporting unsafe situations.
Trauma-informed care is also central to NWCASA’s work. It helps survivors feel safe coming forward and makes healthcare and legal support more accessible. Their NOPE (Next Generation of Prevention Education) program trains high school students to deliver peer education, recognizing that teens are often most influenced by their peers. Interested students in Cook County can get involved through NWCASA.
NWCASA also benefited from the CIF Capacity Builder Award, which enabled them to move into a larger space. This means more workshops, more healing services and more innovative support, such as dance movement therapy. It also ensures that survivors are no longer turned away for lack of space.
Helping prevent child abuse and family violence
Violence in our communities is also evident at the child and family level, and Shelter Youth & Family Services prioritizes prevention to help keep children from entering the child welfare system. Their work spans early intervention and identification, safe shelter, transitional living, mental health services and community health education and awareness.
Trauma, poverty and instability can all contribute to violence, so Shelter focuses on interrupting the cycles early and strengthening families when it is safe to do so. They serve children and young adults from birth to age 24, whenever children and families are experiencing any kind of crisis and involvement with child welfare. They focus on the moments when children are most at risk and when support can have the greatest impact.
Some of the most vulnerable periods are during middle school and ages 18-24, when major life transitions increase risk. Shelter has seen many young people becoming homeless at age 18 when system support ends. They have created a program for youth experiencing homelessness that provides apartments for youth ages 18–24 for up to two years. During that time, participants build budgeting skills, life skills and pathways toward independence.
In 2025, they served 661 youth and family members.
Transportation is another often overlooked barrier to stability, whether for getting to school, appointments or services. Shelter addresses this by providing transit support and, through a CIF grant, now uses two vehicles to help clients access care, maintain connections and improve stability.
Their emergency shelter and foster care programs interrupt the cycles of violence by providing immediate physical and emotional safety, followed by trauma-informed care that helps youth process what they have experienced. With the right support, trauma does not have to repeat itself. Removing a child or siblings from crisis creates space for healing and for engaging in therapeutic care. They also operate two emergency shelters where kids can stay for 24 hours up to several weeks, depending on need.
Across all services, mental health is foundational, not optional. Trauma can affect behavior, relationships and development, so early support helps prevent long-term harm. By helping individuals process trauma, build coping skills and strengthen family relationships, Shelter uses healing as a form of prevention, reducing the risk of future crises.
At the center of this work is the belief that one supportive adult can change a child’s trajectory. That connection does not just change one life; it can shape what that life becomes.
Guiding where funds are directed
Endeavor Health’s Community Investment Fund is guided by a community health needs assessment conducted every three years. This process identifies the region's most pressing health and safety priorities and shapes an implementation strategy to address them. Funding is then directed to organizations best positioned to create meaningful impact.
Each year, nonprofits are invited to apply for support through the Capacity Builder and Impact Awards. In 2025, 170 organizations applied for Capacity Builder funding and 86 applied for the Impact Award, which is focused on long-term change. These investments help expand reach, strengthen services and deepen community impact.
Through CIF partnerships, Endeavor Health also helps elevate visibility for the organizations doing this work. Increased awareness can attract additional partners and funding to strengthen collective efforts. Explore Endeavor Health CIF grant opportunities and learn how to apply to help build safer, healthier communities.
This article was written based on conversations with Jeff Zakem, Endeavor Health; Jesse Hoyt, ONE Northside; Rebecca Plascencia, Northwest Center Against Sexual Assault; Carina H. Santa Maria and Gina Ciulla, Shelter Youth & Family Services
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Endeavor Health Community Investment Fund (CIF)
The Endeavor Health CIF works to help prevent violence by investing in the root causes and social drivers that impact health—supporting organizations that provide housing, mental health care, education and economic opportunity. They recognize violence as a health issue, addressing both the immediate trauma and the long-term physical, emotional and generational effects it creates. By using data and community insight to guide funding, they strengthen local systems and partnerships to build healthier, more stable communities from the ground up.
ONE Northside
ONE Northside works directly in Chicago communities to help prevent violence before it escalates, building trust with at-risk individuals, mediating conflicts and interrupting cycles of retaliation. Their trained team meets people where they are, providing trauma-informed support, resources and real-time intervention in neighborhoods and hospitals. Through strong community partnerships, they focus on the root causes of violence to create safer, more connected communities.
Northwest Center Against Sexual Assault (NWCASA)
NWCASA works to end sexual harm by supporting survivors and educating communities—providing crisis response, trauma-informed counseling and advocacy for people impacted by everything from assault to harassment. They make prevention accessible at every level, from early childhood to high school, teaching consent, healthy relationships and how to seek help. By training educators and empowering young people to lead peer conversations, they build safer, more informed communities from the inside out.
nwcasa.org
Shelter Youth & Family Services
Shelter Youth & Family Services helps prevent child abuse and family violence by supporting children and families before, during and after crisis, offering everything from early intervention and family support to emergency shelter, housing and mental health services. They focus on root causes like trauma, poverty and instability to break cycles early and strengthen families whenever possible. Serving youth from birth through young adulthood, they step in at the most vulnerable moments to provide stability, guidance and a path forward.
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