By the Policy Team
Introduction
As the youth mental health crisis continues and communities seek to reduce neighborhood violence, meaningful interventions that interrupt cycles of violence and trauma are more important than ever. Accordingly, with vital support from the Herbert and Nell Singer Foundation, the Weitzman Institute recently implemented and evaluated a promising solution: Heal Our Youth, a violence prevention intervention that blends restorative justice principles and mindfulness practices for youth in limited-opportunity communities. Weitzman implemented the program in New Britain, Connecticut, between October 2024 and January 2025, then embarked on the first evaluation of its kind, addressing the effectiveness of restorative justice and mindfulness in combination. This blog summarizes program implementation, evaluation findings, and recommendations based on our research brief, Heal Our Youth: A Promising Restorative Justice and Mindfulness Intervention Pilot.
The Intervention
Community violence poses a serious threat to youth, particularly in limited-opportunity communities, where youth of color are disproportionately affected by perpetration, victimization, and witnessing community violence. Prevention programs rarely tackle the emotional, cognitive, and relational dimensions of violence simultaneously. Weitzman designed Heal Our Youth to fill that gap, offering an integrated framework that guides youth on emotional awareness and regulation, conflict resolution, and empathy for others.
Weitzman worked with its parent organization, the Moses/Weitzman Health System (MWHS); MWHS-affiliate organization Community Health Center, Inc. (CHCI), a large safety net health network serving vulnerable populations throughout Connecticut; and local schools and organizations to identify and recruit New Britain youth aged 13 to 17.
Participants completed pre-intervention surveys, which confirmed previous exposures to multiple forms of violence, including having witnessed or heard gunshots; seeing someone taken by police; and seeing individuals chased by gangs. To mitigate the downstream effects of these exposures, the 20 Heal Our Youth interactive sessions emphasized mindfulness practices (e.g., yoga, meditation, stress reduction) and restorative justice principles (e.g., community-engaged conflict resolution).
Evaluation
Participants also completed surveys three months post-intervention (maintenance) to assess program outcomes. These surveys illustrated improvements across many measures, including measures of intent to commit violence and exposure to violence. Participants also attended a focus group to discuss the implementation process (e.g., satisfaction, content delivery) and outcomes. Both quantitative (survey data) and qualitative (focus group) findings affirmed Heal Our Youth’s feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness.
Themes
An analysis of focus group data showed seven themes, explored below:
Emotional Awareness: Youth learned to identify, regulate, and process feelings, which helped diminish anger and violence.
“We learned to find what helps us get our mind off of basically what leads us to the violence, anger that comes within us and we learn, some people use music as a way to cope. Some people use going outside, taking walks as a way to cope, playing video games, all that.”
Self-Improvement: Participating youth reported increased self-esteem and confidence, which reduced their susceptibility to peer pressure.
“In the past 10 weeks, this program helped me show my real characteristics in front of these people, around these people. It helped me realize that there’s no point in really putting up a front for who I am.”
Empathy and Decision Making: Youth expressed learning how to weigh consequences before making decisions considering the perspectives of others.
“Yeah, I know now that everything has a consequence no matter how big or small it is and you just got to think before you speak or just think before you act in every scenario.”
“[The program] caused me to not only look at my point of view but the other person’s point of view before I make an action.”
Communication Skills: The participating youth demonstrated a desire to share what they learned to help their peers process their thoughts, as that strategy benefited them.
“[The program] helped me gain a greater aspect on giving advice to the people who plan on getting themselves into trouble, helped them talk it out or talk them out of getting into trouble, and it’s helped a lot, as a person and my friends and family.”
Conflict Resolution: Youth showed a new solution-oriented thought process and increased self-control regarding conflicts and difficult situations.
“It’s a lot easier to read the room and make decisions and before the program, I feel like for some of us it wasn’t easy as it is now to be able to come up with solutions for problems, and after we learned that subject, I feel like it was a lot easier to read the room, know when to change your tone, how to speak to somebody when you see that they’re not feeling well.”
Yoga/Mindfulness: The youth expressed using the skills they learned in mindfulness sessions to help process various situations.
“Basically, I just use the skills that I learned from meditation and stuff, just to breathe, calm down.”
Community Impact: During the program, youth felt a sense of belonging and increased confidence in forming relationships.
“I gained a lot of new friendships with people in this group and I’ve opened up to things that I wouldn’t normally tell anybody and I feel like in the past 10 weeks, it helped me gain some friendships where I’ve told stuff that I didn’t think I would tell anybody else and they’ve helped me make friendships that I never thought I would make.”
Conclusion
The outcomes outlined above illustrate Heal Our Youth’s promise as a cost-effective strategy for violence prevention and positive youth development. The final report calls for scaling the program through additional partnerships to enhance its implementation and evaluation, and reduce community violence. It also suggests that future interventions incorporate alternative forms of expression, such as journaling, to accommodate diverse learning styles. Ultimately, Heal Our Youth exemplifies how restorative justice and mindfulness can transform vulnerable youth into resilient leaders by investing in their emotional and social well-being.
To learn more about the Heal Our Youth New Britain project, including a detailed overview, and more information on methods, findings, and recommendations, visit Heal Our Youth: A Promising Restorative Justice and Mindfulness Intervention Pilot.