and concentrated poverty, and this violence’s toll falls overwhelmingly on people of color, especially young Black and Brown men and boys and their loved ones. From 2015 to 2020, Black children and teens were more than 12 times as likely to be shot to death as their White peers. Hispanic children and teens and Native American children and teens were both about 2.6 times as likely to be shot to death as their White peers. Over this period, 72 percent of children murdered before their 18th birthday were people of color, and more than 50 percent were Black. (5) Black boys and men make up less than 7 percent of the population in the United States, but account for more than 50 percent of all gun homicide victims each year. Violence is responsible for nearly half of all deaths among Black boys and young men, ages 15 through 24, meaning the parents of a Black son in this age group are as likely to lose their child to homicide as nearly every other cause of death combined. (6) This violence imposes enormous human, social, and economic consequences. Studies show that gun violence has a national economic cost of $557,000,000,000 annually. The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Violence Prevention presented research to Congress demonstrating that youth living in inner cities show a higher prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers in the Nation’s wartime military. While the vast majority of these young people resiliently persevere, people who have been victims of violence are at substantially higher risk of being violently reattacked or killed. Additionally, both direct and indirect violence exposure have been associated with a host of poor health outcomes, including chronic illness, anxiety, depression, and substance misuse. (7) When properly implemented and consistently funded, coordinated, community-based strategies that utilize trauma-responsive care and interrupt cycles of violence can produce lifesaving and cost-saving results in a short period of time without