By Deborah Bailey
Contributing Editor
AFRO American Newspapers
More than 800 persons from the violence intervention community across the United States joined a White House briefing Oct. 23, to learn how states can access federal dollars provided by Medicaid for violence prevention services.
The White House Office on Gun Violence Prevention fielded the call in response to an executive order signed by the Biden-Harris administration on Sept. 26 and its announcement of additional steps to reduce gun violence.
During the signing ceremony, Biden called on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CSS) to clarify the reimbursements currently available through CSS.
“One in five Americans know someone who has been shot or killed as a result of gun violence,” said Greg Jackson, deputy director, White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, on the call.
“This is $805 billion put in place for the communities we are serving,” Jackson said. “We really are challenging you to step up and build the coalitions needed to access this funding; to work closely with your state leadership and to get these resources to every state.”
Medicaid reimbursement has been available to states since 2021 for violence prevention services. However, only eight states currently provide reimbursement for community prevention violence strategies.
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New York, North Carolina and Oregan have passed legislation allocating Medicaid reimbursement for a range of violence prevention services based on needs in communities in their respective states.
“Different states are doing it in very different ways. There is a lot of experimentation going on and we’re learning along the way,” said Dr. Kyle Fisher, who practices emergency room medicine and serves as clinical associate professor at University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
For instance, Maryland and several other states are using Medicaid reimbursement to pay for violence prevention training and certification for front line violence prevention workers, while North Carolina has set up a 1115 Medicaid reimbursement plan covering basic life needs such as housing, food, and job placement by those directly impacted by community level violence.
State violence prevention coalitions have the option to work with state Medicaid offices to request what is known as a 1115 waiver, allowing states to make experimental changes to their existing Medicaid programs to offer innovative supports like the North Carolina reimbursements.
“We need you to work closely with your state leadership” to determine what services are critically needed in individual states, Jackson said to call participants.
Gun violence was responsible for 46,728 deaths in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This figure represents a slight decrease from 2021, when the highest number of deaths by gun violence ever, 48,830, was recorded.
Black people in America continue to face death by gun violence at a rate 13 times higher than their White counterparts, according to an analysis of CDC data by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For children and youth ages 1-17, Black deaths due to gun violence are 17 times the rate of Whites.
The U.S. rate of death by gun violence far exceeds other high-income nations. Additionally, the U.S. is the only country in the world where civilian ownership of guns exceeds the population according to the World Population Review.
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