Introduction: The USA has the highest rate of community gun violence of any developed democracy. There is an urgent need to develop feasible, scalable and community-led interventions that mitigate incident gun violence and its associated health impacts. Our community-academic research team received National Institutes of Health funding to design a community-led intervention that mitigates the health impacts of living in communities with high rates of gun violence. Methods and analysis: We adapted 'Building Resilience to Disasters', a conceptual framework for natural disaster preparedness, to guide actions of multiple sectors and the broader community to respond to the man-made disaster of gun violence. Using this framework, we will identify existing community assets to be building blocks of future community-led interventions. To identify existing community assets, we will conduct social network and spatial analyses of the gun violence episodes in our community and use these analyses to identify people and neighbourhood blocks that have been successful in avoiding gun violence. We will conduct qualitative interviews among a sample of individuals in the network that have avoided violence (n=45) and those living or working on blocks that have not been a location of victimisation (n=45) to identify existing assets. Lastly, we will use community-based system dynamics modelling processes to create a computer simulation of the community-level contributors and mitigators of the effects of gun violence that incorporates local population-based based data for calibration. We will engage a multistakeholder group and use themes from the qualitative interviews and the computer simulation to identify feasible community-led interventions. Ethics and dissemination: The Human Investigation Committee at Yale University School of Medicine (#2000022360) granted study approval. We will disseminate study findings through peer-reviewed publications and academic and community presentations. The qualitative interview guides, system dynamics model and group model building scripts will be shared broadly.

As of September 23, 2020, the USA had both the highest number of COVID-19 cases and the largest incarcerated population in the world. Approximately 2·3 million people are currently incarcerated in prisons and jails in the USA. More than 6·5 million individuals are under daily correctional supervision, which includes probation and parole, representing 2·6% of the entire US adult population. Due to systemic racism, Black people have been disproportionately affected by mass incarceration and COVID-19. Nearly one-third of Black men will face imprisonment during their lifetime, and Black communities have a markedly higher burden of COVID-19 cases and mortality than White populations. Considering the inextricable link between the health of Black communities and the US criminal legal system, jails and prisons are uniquely positioned to advance health equity and community health, particularly during the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: COVID-19 has entered United States prison systems at alarming rates. Disparities in social and structural determinants of health disproportionately affect those experiencing incarceration, making them more vulnerable to COVID-19. Additionally, prisons are sites of congregate living, making it impossible to practice social distancing, and most prisons have relied only on incremental measures to reduce risk and spread of COVID-19. To more fully understand the impact that COVID-19 is having on incarcerated populations, it is critical to have systematic data on testing, test positivity, cases, and case fatality. Using data from the COVID Prison Project, we present data on 53 prison systems COVID-19 testing, test positivity, case, and case fatality by state and compare these data with each state's general population. We do this for the early stages of the pandemic, utilizing data through July 15, 2020. Results: Many states are not reporting full information on COVID testing with some also not reporting on case fatality. Among those reporting data, there is a wide variation between testing, test positivity, and case rates within prison systems and as compared to the general population. However, when more tests are deployed more cases are identified with the majority of state prisons having higher case rates than their general population. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for the implementation and study of COVID-19 mitigation and surveillance strategies to flatten the COVID-19 curve in prisons across the country. We call for future research to build on these data from the COVID Prison Project to protect the health of our nations' often forgotten residents.

Modeling conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculates that as many as 160 to 214 million people in the United States could become infected by the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19) and that as many as 200 000 to 1.7 million may die from COVID-19. Prisons and jails are amplifiers of infectious diseases because of overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions and will most certainly contribute to these estimates. COVID-19 outbreaks have already been identified in New York City and Cook County, Illinois, jails, with infection rates at the Rikers Island jail complex far exceeding community rates. In response, correctional systems are implementing changes to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, including reducing jail and prison admissions and releasing people from facilities. In tandem, jails and prisons must also initiate facility-level policies to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

No other industrialized democracy has a carceral system that is as expansive, punitive, and racialized as that of the United States. More than 2.2 million people in 2018 were incarcerated in jails and prisons, a sixfold increase since the 1970s. Each year more than 600 000 people are released from prisons and more than 11 million cycle through jails, extending the effects of incarceration into households and shaping community health. Mass incarceration is the result of social, political, and economic forces with deep roots in the aftermaths of slavery, labor exploitation, and racial discrimination. This is evident in the stark racial inequalities that exist in the carceral system. Black people are more likely to be arrested, killed by police, incarcerated, and placed in solitary confinement than their White counterparts. The criminalization of blackness and poverty, as reflected in the failed war on drugs, draconian sentencing laws, centralized power of prosecutors, a school-to-prison pipeline, and gutting of health and social systems, is among the forces underlying the titanic expansion and deep entrenchment of the carceral state. Over the past 40 years, our society has deliberately divested from social and public goods designed to promote health and economic security while pumping resources into police, courts, and correctional system.