Description
Firearm violence is a major public health issue and a leading cause of premature death. This session will explore some of the root causes of violence and highlight policies and practices for effective prevention. Speakers will present local, state and national perspectives.
Contributors
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Josh Horwitz - Executive Director, Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence
MODERATOR
Joshua Horwitz, J.D., is the Executive Director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. He has spent more than three decades working on gun violence prevention issues. Josh sees his role as looking around the next corner to develop new ideas and strategies for the gun violence prevention movement. In 2013, Josh was one of the founders of the Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy, a group of mental health and public health experts who have examined the intersection of guns and mental health. The Consortium released a set of policy recommendations designed to promote policy that will more effectively prevent those at a heightened risk of violent behavior from possessing firearms. One of those recommendations was the basis for California’s first-in-the-nation Gun Violence Restraining Order law (AB1014) that passed in September 2014. Josh is a graduate of the University of Michigan and received his law degree from the George Washington University. He is a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where he teaches public health advocacy.
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Howard Spivak, MD
Howard Spivak MD is a pediatrician and public health practitioner who has held positions as Principal Deputy Director of the National Institute of Justice (USDOJ), Director of the Division of Violence Prevention (CDC), Professor of Pediatrics and Community Health (Tufts University Medical School), Deputy Commissioner (MA DPH), and Director of Adolescent Health for the City of Boston DPH. He has spent much of his career addressing the public health response to youth violence prevention and has written and spoken extensively on this subject nationally and internationally. He is co-author of two books on youth violence, “Murder Is No Accident” and “Sugar and Spice and No Longer Nice.”
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DeVonne Boggan - Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Advance Peace
DeVone Boggan serves as Founder and CEO of Advance Peace. Advance Peace interrupts gun violence in American urban neighborhoods by providing transformational opportunities to young men involved in lethal firearm offenses and placing them in a high-touch, personalized fellowship. By working with and supporting a targeted group of individuals at the core of gun hostilities, Advance Peace bridges the gap between anti-violence programming and a hard-to-reach population at the center of violence in urban areas, thus breaking the cycle of gun hostilities and altering the trajectory of these men’s lives. DeVone is the former Neighborhood Safety Director and founding director of the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) for the City of Richmond, California. The ONS is a government, non-law enforcement agency that is charged with reducing firearm assaults and associated deaths in Richmond. Under his leadership as Neighborhood Safety Director, the city experienced a 71% reduction in gun violence between 2007 when the office was created and 2016. His work with ONS has been recognized in national publications and media, including the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, Detroit Free Press, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, PBS NewsHour, NPR, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightline, CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN. Prior to his tenure in Richmond, DeVone served as Policy Director for Safe Passages, a nonprofit public/private partnership focused on improving urban health outcomes for children, youth and families.
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Brian Malte - Executive Director, Hope and Heal Fund
Brian Malte is a nationally recognized leader in the gun violence prevention movement. In 2001, Brian joined the Washington, D.C. office of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence as National Policy Director. In 2016 he returned to his California roots to helm the Hope and Heal Fund to spearhead the philanthropic movement to increase support to local violence prevention organizations and community advocates working to end gun violence.
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Patricia Lee Refo - President, American Bar Association
Patricia Lee “Trish” Refo is president of the American Bar Association, the largest voluntary association of attorneys and legal professionals in the world.
As a partner at Snell & Wilmer in Phoenix, Refo concentrates on complex commercial litigation and internal investigations. She chairs the firm’s Professional Liability Litigation Group.
From 2014 to 2016, Refo was the ABA’s second highest-ranking elected official as chair of its policymaking House of Delegates. She has also served as chair of the ABA’s largest practice group, the Section of Litigation, and as chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Membership, the American Jury Project, and the Association’s grassroots advocacy activity, ABA Day in Washington. Refo was also a member of the ABA Commission on Civic Education and the Separation of Powers.
Refo has served on the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence of the United States Judicial Conference, appointed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and on the Arizona Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Rules of Evidence. She is a member of the American Law Institute and its Litigation Advisory Panel and is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services & Education. Previously, Refo served as a director of the American Bar Endowment and as co-chair of the National Association of Women Lawyers Committee for the Evaluation of Supreme Court Nominees.
Among her awards and recognitions, Refo in 2007 was named to the National Law Journal’s list of The 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America. She received the President’s Award from the State Bar of Arizona and has been inducted into the Maricopa County Bar Association Hall of Fame. She received her B.A. with high honors and high distinction and her J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan.