In Brisbane, the Queensland police officers have been adopting practices to strengthen community engagement with the goal of making the city’s residents feel safer. Some initiatives include learning Mandarin to better connect with their Chinese speaking residents and increasing their presence at public shopping centers. Facing a sharp increase in crime, the department is hoping these new efforts can help curtail criminal activity and make their residents feel safer.

Albuquerque Police Department knows that not all community members are apt to trust in officers, so the department created a new interdisciplinary team specifically focused on working with those people. Although this is not a quick fix, the police have reported an increase in information reporting that has lead to the arrests of wanted suspects.

In Glasgow, Scotland, the city is taking a public health approach to knife crime. Instead of just grappling with the effects of violence, the city is taking a preventative, multi-pronged approach and addressing some of the underlying issues driving violence and crime in the area. While there are many interventions, common themes include building trust and offering support to those who could be vulnerable to committing violent acts.

Boosting trust in vaccines requires rebuilding confidence in the health system. In France, where as many as one in three people express skepticism regarding vaccinations, health officials have undertaken proactive social media campaigns against disinformation in addition to increasing mandatory vaccine requirements for children. The lag in vaccinations among the French follows decades where several high profile failures of the health system led to widespread distrust and harmful long-term effects on vaccination rates.

Enrolling community members as Volunteer Community Mobilizers (VCMs) dramatically increases the effectiveness of public health campaigns. In Nigeria, the Jigawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency has made progress with regard to immunization rates through its health ambassador program. The VCMs act as links between the localities and the public health services, ensuring that each that child receives vaccinations on schedule. The state has also used VCMs to increase the frequency of home visits and outreach efforts.

What started as a telephone tip line, Colorado’s anonymous tip program, Safe2Tell has now become an app that is publicly funded and part of the Attorney General’s office. The program gives students a way to report potentially dangerous situations they hear about or read online. While Safe2Tell does receive some false reports, overall, it has bolstered a sense of trust and protection in schools across the state.

Philadelphia’s LGBT Police Liaison Committee serves as an intermediary between the city’s LGBTQ community and police force, creating a safe place for LGBTQ people, many of whom are fearful of police, to report crimes. Besides being liaisons, the committee also does community outreach and education to both bring awareness to their services and create a more inclusive city.

The city of Montreal, Canada is testing how safe injection sites can be used in the fight against opioid overdoses. Montreal has 4 total sites, and one of them, called Cactus Montreal, has already supervised thousands of users in less than a year without a single death. Cactus is often busy with about 100 visitors each day, and they say that their services also prevent public injections and litter of used needles.

Too often, poor community members are not included in public discourse over how public spaces should look-- rather, the urban planning is more top-down. To change that, the UN’s Block by Block project is using the computer game Minecraft to include locals in shaping the physical spaces in their own communities by teaching them digital design skills. The UN program has engaged over 17,000 people, and 20 crowdsourced designs have already been built in cities around the world.

Urban planners in Barcelona have a new way to engage locals who want a voice in urban design. Carritos, or mobile carts, are traveling to public spaces to draw in people who can share their opinions on development projects. This especially helps get feedback from those who do not have time to attend traditional city planning meetings. The goal is to make city planning a more inclusive space.