December 11, 2025
Middletown, Conn., December 11, 2025 – The Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education has awarded the Moses/Weitzman Health System (MWHS) $300,000 to shape how primary care can prevent firearm violence. The project will help connect patients identified as at-risk to programs that can help them, such as behavioral health, social services, and community violence intervention programs.
The award was highly competitive, with more than 160 proposals submitted and seven grant awardees selected. These projects emphasized relevance, impact, and need, with a strong focus on clinical innovation and practice-based evidence; support for both capacity building and new studies; and leadership with lived experience.
The Moses/Weitzman Health System,anchored by its Federally Qualified Health Center, Community Health Center, Inc. (CHC), and its flagship research, education, and policy innovation hub, the Weitzman Institute, will lead this multi-year initiative to:
- Develop and implement gun violence screening and referrals across four participating health center sites in urban locations (Hartford, Meriden, New Britain, and Waterbury, Connecticut) that have been disproportionately impacted by gun violence, and social and economic challenges that increase vulnerability to gun violence;
- Evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of this integrated approach, generating actionable data to inform broader adoption; and
- Create a replicable toolkit, policy recommendations, and sustainability plan to support scaling across health center and other safety-net primary care health systems nationwide.
According to Dr. April Joy Damian, Chief Scientific Officer and Director of MWHS’s Weitzman Institute, “We are deeply grateful to the Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education for this important award. Our project will demonstrate the role of health centers as leaders in gun violence prevention and recovery by integrating standardized gun violence risk screening, safety planning, and referral protocols into routine primary care.”
