This June, the U.S. Surgeon General declared gun violence as a national public health crisis. It is currently the leading cause of death among children and adolescents.
As part of the University of Virginia’s Gun Violence Solutions Project, the Batten School is supporting local communities and partners working to prevent and mitigate gun violence in the greater Charlottesville region through a new Gun Violence Clinic.
The clinic will be led by Michele Claibourn, PhD, an assistant professor of public policy and data science at the Batten School and director of Equitable Analysis at The Equity Center at UVA. She has directed or supervised multiple community-based research projects in the Charlottesville community, including racial equity studies for the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless.
The fall clinic at the Batten School is open to all undergraduate and graduate students at UVA. It provides a unique opportunity for students to work on one of the most challenging and important issues of our time. Students interested in signing up can use SIS.
“I enrolled in the Gun Violence Clinic with Professor Claibourn because my encounters with gun violence on my college campus during undergrad drove me to get involved,” —Priscilla Akpalu, a Batten master of public policy student graduating in Spring of 2025