About the Center

The Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice (CNSJ) at Drexel University's Dornsife School of Public Health promotes health equity and a racially just world through healing-centered interventions to survivors of violence, training for community health worker peers as a pipeline to sustaining careers, and through research and advocacy.

Our ultimate goal is to inspire hope and healing in young people to prevent future violence and trauma, while transforming health and public health systems toward trauma-informed, healing-centered, equitable, and racially just practices.

CNSJ was founded in 2008 with initial support from the Thomas Scattergood Foundation with the goal to change the conversation about violence away from a criminal justice perspective and toward a trauma-informed public health perspective.

The flagship programs of CNSJ include Healing Hurt People and the Community Health Worker/Certified Peer Specialist (CHWP) Training Academy.