How Cure Violence Global turned data collection with CommCare into a strategic advantage to demonstrate impact and drive funding
By Dr. Charles Elliott, Ph.D, Director of Data Management at Cure Violence Global
Introduction
As the Director of Data Management at Cure Violence Global, I oversee the data collection and reporting processes for our global programs. I assess violence-related data to help implement programs, justify funding, and conduct research on violence prevention. I lead a team that creates custom reports and evaluations, and I’ve trained thousands of people on our data collection software.
When I joined Cure Violence Global three years ago, I began exploring how we could better leverage data for our constituencies worldwide. At that time, we had 85 program sites. Since then, we’ve grown that number by nearly 50%, and now we’re preparing to “reach the next galaxy” by performing significantly more complex and innovative data extractions and manipulations, and discovering creative ways to leverage our data. This article is written for fellow non-profit organizations on the journey of setting up data management systems while navigating the throes of how to extract all of its usefulness. My hope is to share with you some of the insights from our data management approach and the success we’ve achieved so far.
About Cure Violence Global
Cure Violence Global helps communities implement effective violence prevention programs to radically reduce violence. The organization was founded by Dr. Gary Slutkin, a former head of the World Health Organization’s Intervention Development Unit, who recognized the epidemic nature of violence and the need for intervention.
CeaseFire Chicago was our first partner organization, launching in West Garfield Park—one of Chicago’s most violent areas. Our collaborative efforts resulted in a 67% reduction in shootings in the first year.
Since then, Cure Violence Global has expanded across the U.S. to cities like Baltimore, New York, New Orleans, Oakland, and Loiza, Puerto Rico, and in 2008, began its first international programs in Iraq. Today, we support programs in Canada, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, Syria, Trinidad & Tobago, and the United Kingdom, and have provided violence prevention training and techniques to representatives from many other countries.
How our Community-based Approach Works
Violence is the leading cause of death for people under 25 worldwide and a significant issue for youth across generations. Cure Violence Global addresses this major global problem through disease control methodology, treating violence as a public health issue. By employing a rigorous, scientific, and data-driven approach, CVG strengthens community partnerships, and helps communities implement effective violence prevention programs.
Our model, based on the WHO’s strategies for controlling infectious diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis, applies three proven epidemic control strategies to combat violence:
- Detect and Interrupt Potentially Violent Conflicts
- Violence interrupters, a new category of health workers, identify and mediate potentially lethal conflicts in the community, following up to ensure conflicts do not reignite.
- Identify and Treat Individuals at the Highest Risk
- Outreach workers engage with those at high risk, discussing the costs of violence and connecting them to support services like education, job training, and drug treatment to foster long-term behavior change.
- Mobilize the Community to Change Norms
- We engage community leaders, business owners, residents, faith leaders, and high-risk individuals to shift community norms and expectations around violence.
Public health outreach strategies often employ workers who share the same background and come from the same neighborhoods as those at risk—in this case, individuals most at risk for violence. CVG determined participant risk based on factors outlined by the CDC. Cure Violence sites hire violence interrupters and outreach workers who already have the community’s trust, enabling them to influence and change behavior effectively.
The interrupters and outreach workers are trained to collect data during their outreaches on key indicators such as the number of interruptions or mediations that occur in violence hotspots, the reduction in violence in these areas, and the number of referrals and services provided to participants. We use a centralized digital tool to collect the data and integrate with our visualization tool for real-time data analysis and reporting.
In addition to tracking violence, we also monitor positive community activities like picnics, barbecues, and get-togethers that improve community norms. Monthly reports show the number of logs submitted and provide insights into our approach, such as the number of hours spent on conflict interruption.
CVG measures risk over time in its participant pool through using quantitative measures to assess changes in the level of risk overtime each month in all of its active participants. All of this data is recorded from within CommCare and we use it in real time to determine major differences in risk score month to month on each of our outreach worker’s caseloads, and depending on the number of participants of high risk on their caseloads.
Finding a Scalable and Secure Digital Platform
In the early stages, we struggled with an earlier data system that was both inflexible and complex. This outdated system made the processes of exporting and importing data cumbersome, it lacked any support or user-friendly resources and user training was a challenge. We needed a more adaptable system with advanced features like custom application development and a centralized view of all of the apps (or what we call project spaces).
We found all of these capabilities available in CommCare which is now our preferred, comprehensive data collection platform that supports our work globally, addressing femicide, infanticide, mass migration and political violence in affected communities. It primarily captures program data for all our 117 programs in countries all over the world, helping us gauge their effectiveness. We have trained 1,760 users on how to use CommCare, hosting training sessions of 30-40 individuals at a time, with our largest intake being 340 interrupters in Cali, Colombia, in a citywide initiative.
Case Study: Success in Uruguay
In Montevideo, Uruguay, we leveraged CommCare’s Enterprise platform to implement a local Cure Violence program using our evidence-based health approach. We built 8-10 custom applications in CommCare that support each aspect of the program’s strategy, allowing us to measure and manage the entire program in CommCare. These applications collect data on more than 18 case types, each containing over 12 forms. We tailored the project space to meet the specific needs of our funder and used generative AI to translate the project space in better, and more meaningful ways, especially where slang or jargon is used (in international languages).
The suite of CommCare applications for our work Uruguay includes the following tools used across the program’s staff:
Image: Cure Violence Global portal showing how to create a daily log
- Staff Daily Logs: Tracking daily work within our model.
- Community Conflict Mediation: Filling out violence interruption forms in CommCare every time a mediation is performed.
- Case Management with Participants: Managing caseloads, notes, needs assessments, goal setting, and success stories.
- Tracking Violent Acts: Monitoring incidents such as shootings, beatings, aggravated assaults, gang violence, femicide, and infanticide in catchment areas.
The Program Manager can now see all his staff and programs, the dates they submit their logs, and the specific hours dedicated to each aspect of the approach. They have access to an abundance of information that was previously unavailable, and all of the cases are editable should they need to adjust data after it’s been entered.
When we created the enterprise space, we wanted to make sure that we could create sophisticated reports, and invested heavily in our backend to create exports for different case types. We utilize CommCare’s Tableau integration extensively, and OData feeds to refresh our Tableau extracts and pull all the data into our Tableau instance based on assigned filters.
Image: Cure Violence Global portal showing their Program Data Dashboard
A key improvement was separating these into different applications where we now have modules for behavior change, community norm change, and a training portal. We also developed a virtual training portal within CommCare, which has proven to be highly effective over in-person training, saving time and reducing costs.
Our program in Uruguay now collects more violence data than local governments, military, neighboring governments (and countries), and multiple international organizations (UN, USAID), all enabled through CommCare.
Leveraging Data for Strategic Insights
Stakeholders are most interested in being able to see if there has been a reduction in police and fire department interventions. We combine this data with program indicators to create models like the Risk Needs Resilience Assessment, measuring longitudinal scores across risks, needs, and resilience over time. This scientific approach helps determine risk reduction by each program site.
One of the most significant advancements we’ve achieved, comparable to a quantum leap, has involved mapping the cross streets where interruptions and mediations occur and comparing these locations to police-reported assault and homicide hot spots. By analyzing this data, we can see how our interventions are shrinking these hot spots in some cities and even pushing them out of our catchment areas.
We’re leveraging advanced technology, too, with the help of data science to translate and manipulate data using Python. These data explorations have successfully addressed some of the key challenges we’ve faced, such as efficiently editing thousands of forms to add missing program site information, resulting in a more accurate and comprehensive data management system.
Final Reflections
We see CommCare as a mission-critical, strategic platform for us. Without it, we’d be running programs blindly.
I see our relationship with Dimagi as a collaboration that has enabled us to focus on the needs of our staff in the communities that we serve, and help their data collection processes grow where none existed before. Our partnership with Dimagi allows us to approach data collection strategically and on a massive scale, so that we can build on 20 years of evidence supporting our approach to curing violence.
I’ve seen the work we’re involved in, and the capabilities of CommCare, change lives.
CommCare provides us with the flexibility to ensure our data collection efforts are useful. We can definitively show the impact of our approach, identifying where it’s working and where it might not be. We can discuss challenges like high levels of staff recidivism and retention issues thanks to the data collected through CommCare.
With CommCare, Cure Violence Global has been able to turn data into a strategic advantage, showcasing our impact and driving funding. It’s not just a nice-to-have; it’s a need-to-have.
Visiting program sites in the toughest parts of Milwaukee, DC, and Atlanta, I’ve walked with interrupters – who are by no means tech-savvy – and watched as they enter data on their mobile phones. This capability is groundbreaking. Training users to use the system safely and easily is a significant task, and we’ve worked hard to achieve that.
I hope this guide and set of tips is helpful as you consider the unique data and technology needs of your teams. I uncover more on the topic on Dimagi’s High-Impact Growth podcast, and if you have any questions, you can find me at [email protected]
We would like to thank Dr. Charles Elliott for his contribution to the Dimagi blog. To find out more about how CommCare can serve the needs of your Organization, please reach out to us.
