About

Jason Corburn is a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. He directs the Institute of Urban and Regional Development and the Center for Global Healthy Cities, and co-directs the joint Master of City Planning (MCP) and Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program. His research, practice, and teaching focus on urban health in the US and globally, exploring the links between environmental health and social justice in cities. He leads action-research projects that address issues such as racial and ethnic disparities in health, citizen-science, community health and healing, urban gun violence, climate justice, health-in-all policies, and health equity in informal settlements. Corburn’s work emphasizes the role of local knowledge in promoting urban health equity and examines the intersections of urban planning, design, and health.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Medicine
• Geography
• Economic growth
• Law
• Environmental health
• Criminology
• Business
• Gerontology
• Socioeconomics
• Pathology
• Environmental planning
• Virology
• Finance
• Economics

Selected publications

• Community violence intervention: measuring risk & protective factors for gun use among program participants

  Health & Justice · 2026-01-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Community Violence Intervention (CVI) involves recruiting likely gun violence offenders using street outreach and offering mentorship, social services and other supports to discourage future firearm violence. Grounded in public health, CVI interventions identify an individual’s risk factors and work to enhance protective and buffering factors that can help prevent a client from offending. This paper reviews evaluations of CVI interventions to understand how participants’ risk factors are defined and measured. We used keywords to identify 38 published evaluations of 32 different CVI interventions that recruited community members and used street-outreach as the primary mode of engagement. We then used the PRISMA scoping review methodology to identify categories of risk and protective factors to screen each published evaluation for whether and how they measured participants’ risk, protective and buffering factors at program onset. We found that 56% (18/32) of evaluations included some demographic information about participants and 44% (14/32) provided additional details about their educational or employment status. The criminal justice history was reported in 59% (19/32) and gang or group affiliation in 47% (15/32) of the evaluations we reviewed. The CVI participants’ history related to gun violence was documented in 53% (17/32). Far fewer evaluations documented potential assets, buffering or protective factors of CVI participants: only 16% (5/32) reported on whether any clients were receiving social services at intake and only 6% (2/32) documented any clients’ strengths or protective factors. We also found that no two programs captured the same information about gang, criminal justice, gun violence or social risk factors. Preliminary findings suggest that many CVI programs may not be capturing whether clients face known risk factors for future gun use, and that these programs rarely capture potential protective and buffering factors that might inform program service delivery and potentially enhance the likelihood that interventions will help prevent future gun use. This study aims to support the emerging field of CVI as it works to build evidence that these interventions successfully address the specific needs of urban young people and prevent them from engaging in firearm offending.

  PublisherDOI

• Advancing Peace

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2025-10-07 · 1 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Mission possible: ending gun violence in America’s Black and brown communities. As COVID-19 took hold, urban gun violence exploded—but not in four cities in California. What did these cities have in common? The Advance Peace gun violence prevention program. In Advancing Peace, urban public health scholar Jason Corburn and the program’s founder, DeVone Boggan, reveal how the community-based approach truly works and how it holds out genuine hope, and proven solutions, for those trying to end the plague of gun violence in US cities. With powerful evidence and heartfelt stories from the front lines, the authors describe a transformation based on compassion and redemption. Without overlooking the legacy of slavery, racism, and poverty in America’s urban areas, the book lays out evidence-based, practical, cost-effective steps that tap the forces of unconditional love, forgiveness, and unyielding focus to restore a sense of purpose to those at the center of the crisis and to heal their communities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Correction: Evaluating advance peace in Fresno, California: An interrupted times series analysis of a community-based gun violence intervention

  PLoS ONE · 2025-12-02

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0328780.].

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evaluating advance peace in Fresno, California: An interrupted times series analysis of a community-based gun violence intervention

  PLoS ONE · 2025-08-27

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: Gun violence is a critical public health issue, contributing to the disproportionate burden of health inequities among racially and economically marginalized populations. Advance Peace, a community-driven gun reduction program that integrates street outreach workers to interrupt conflicts with trauma-informed programming to provide mentorship and support for young people at the center of urban gun violence, may be a strategy to reduce gun violence and build healthy communities. We assessed whether the implementation of Advance Peace in Fresno, California was associated with a reduction in gun-related violence, including homicides and assaults. We hypothesized that post-implementation of Advance Peace, there would be a reduction in both gun-related homicides and assaults. METHODS: Leveraging crime statistics from the Fresno Police Department on gun-related homicides and assaults between January 2014 and June 2023, we evaluated the impact of Advance Peace programming, implemented beginning in July 2021, on gun violence in Fresno. Descriptive analysis assessed average gun violence rates over time. We used interrupted time series models to assess the rates of gun violence associated with the implementation of Advance Peace in Fresno. RESULTS: In Fresno, there was evidence of a reduction in crime rates following the introduction of Advance Peace intervention. Two years post-intervention, there was a 46% decrease in the rate of all gun-related crimes, including both homicides and assaults (rate ratio: 0.54, 95% CI: 0.36-0.81). The intervention was also associated with a reduction in the rate of gun-related homicides (RR = 0.45, 95% CI: 0.21-0.95) and the rate of gun-related assaults (RR = 0.58, 95% CI: 0.38-0.89). CONCLUSION: Findings from this study demonstrate that Advance Peace may be an effective strategy to reduce gun violence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Health Equity in All Urban Policies: A Case Study of Richmond, California

  Community Health Equity Research & Policy · 2024-08-13

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Local governments working in partnership with communities can institutionalize practices that promote health equity. We offer a case study of how one city in the US is implementing Health in All Policies (HiAP) with the explicit aim of promoting health equity. We use participant observations, original document reviews and interviews to describe how Richmond, California, is building new partnerships, programs and practices with community-based organizations and within government itself as part of the implementation of its HiAP Ordinance. We also report on indicators that were identified by community and government stakeholders for tracking progress toward improving place-based determinants of population health. We find that the responsibility for implementing Richmond's HiAP Ordinance rests on a new institution within local government and this entity is building new partnerships, promoting innovative policies and augmenting practices toward greater health equity. We also reveal how city governments and community partners can collaboratively track progress toward health equity using locally gathered data.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Towards a New Urban Health Science

  Urban Science · 2023-02-24 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The intensity and range of health challenges that people in cities are facing has increased in recent years. This is due in part to a failure to adequately adapt and respond to emergent and expanding global systemic risks, but also to a still-limited understanding of the profound impacts of complexity on urban health. While complexity science is increasingly embraced by the health and urban sciences, it has yet to be functionally incorporated into urban health research, policy, and practice. Accelerating urbanization in a context of escalating environmental constraints will require deeper engagement with complexity, yet also, paradoxically, much swifter, more effective, and more risk-averse decision-making. Meeting these demands will require adopting a science, policy and practice style which is integrative, inclusive, collaborative, systemic, fast, and frugal. We propose transformational shifts in scientific methodology, epistemological and ontological stances, types of rationality, and governance to shift researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and citizens towards a new, complexity-informed science of urban health.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The practices of urban health equity: a call for greater humility

  Cities & Health · 2023-10-20 · 1 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Co-creating places for urban health & healing: the case of Pogo Park

  Cities & Health · 2023-07-21 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This case study explores how an urban, low-income, community in Richmond, California, came together to reclaim a local park, redesign and redevelop it, and the impacts that process and the new green space is having on local residents. The park is called Elm Playlot and the community group, Pogo Park. Methods used to generate the case study included original document review, participant observation, and interviews, as well as data from two community surveys and a youth photovoice project. The case study emphasizes that urban health promoting and healing physical and social transformations must be co-created, community leadership, ownership and economic benefits must be prioritized, and decade-long commitments from residents, local government and non-governmental organizations, not one alone, are necessary. We also found that redevelopment of Pogo Park contributed to significant reductions in self-reported fear of violence and improvements in community social connections, trust and overall stress for those living in the parks’ Iron Triangle neighborhood. Further, two years after the completion of the park, life expectancy in the neighborhood had increased by five years, the number of gun homicides was reduced by over 30%, and almost 60% of residents were rating their health as good or excellent.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Preventing Urban Firearm Homicides during COVID-19: Preliminary Results from Three Cities with the Advance Peace Program

  Journal of Urban Health · 2022-06-30 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Art and Science of Urban Gun Violence Reduction: Evidence from the Advance Peace Program in Sacramento, California

  Urban Science · 2022-02-02 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Urban gun violence is a critical human health and social justice issue. Strategies to reduce urban gun violence are increasingly being taken out of the domain of police and into community-based programs. One such community-driven gun violence reduction program analyzed here is called Advance Peace. Advance Peace (AP) uses street outreach workers as violence interrupters and adult mentors to support the decision making and life chances of those at the center of urban gun violence. We reported on the impact Advance Peace had on gun violence and program participants in the City of Sacramento, California, from 2018–2019. Using an interrupted time series model, we attributed a gun violence reduction of 18% city wide and up to 29% in one of the AP target neighborhoods from the intervention. We also found that of the 50 participants in the Advance Peace Sacramento program 98% were alive, 90% did not have a new gun charge or arrest, 84% reported an improved outlook on life, all received cognitive behavioral therapy, and 98% reported that their AP outreach worker was one of the most important adults in their life. Advance Peace is a viable community-driven, urban gun violence, and healing-focused program.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Tolu Oni

  Federal University of Technology

  14 shared

• Rajiv Bhatia

  7 shared

• Saroj Jayasinghe

  University of Colombo

  7 shared

• Khaalid Muttaqi

  6 shared

• DeVone Boggan

  6 shared

• Jeffrey P. Osleeb

  University of Connecticut

  6 shared

• Franz Gatzweiler

  Institute of Urban Environment

  6 shared

• Waleska Teixeira Caiaffa

  Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

  6 shared

Education

• PhD

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2002

Awards & honors

• Cities for Life wins Place Book Award (2022)