National Network Director David M. Kennedy and colleagues pioneered Operation Ceasefire in Boston during the 1990's. The intervention was responsible for a 63 percent reduction in youth homicide that came to be known as “The Boston Miracle.” This initial implementation is where many of the main mechanisms of the strategy were developed, including the call-in meeting to communicate directly with group members.
"The programs that have best managed to reduce gun violence target the young men most likely to be involved in shootings with a combination of assistance and policing. Almost all of them are modeled on Operation Ceasefire, an initiative that started in Boston in 1996 and ended four years later."
A new Massachusetts-based group, the National Medical Council on Gun Violence, says it’s time to go beyond asking patients if they have access to a gun. “If people don’t know what to do when they get a ‘yes,’ then they’re never going to screen for it,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, who helped organize the “Caring for Patients at Risk for Gun Violence: Medical, Legal, & Ethical Issues” conference at Baystate Medical Center on Dec 6th.
This Op-Ed argues that the National Network strategies, which grew out of the success of “Operation Ceasefire” in Boston in the mid-1990s, are “how we, as a nation, can and must finally back out of the rolling destruction, by death and mass incarceration, of our cities, our society, and our moral character.”
