Sharing a language does not always mean sharing meaning. That became clear to researcher William Wical when he and community organizer Tyrique Glasgow were reviewing interviews Wical had done of Black men who’d been involved in a hospital-based violence intervention program. On this episode of Policy Outsider, we learn about how a confusion of meaning resulted in a new endeavor: the Glossary Project. The episode explores Wical and Glasgow’s efforts to get academics, practitioners, victims of gun violence, and the media all speaking the same culturally competent language.
Guests
Transcript was generated using AI software and may contain errors.
Joel Tirado 00:00
Welcome to Policy Outsider presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. I’m Joel Tirado. Sharing a language does not always mean sharing meaning. That became clear to researcher William Wical
William Wical 00:16
My name is William Wical, w, I, L, L, I,
Joel Tirado 00:20
when he and Tyrique Glasgow
Tyrique Glasgow 00:22
Tyrique Glasgow, t, y, r, I
Joel Tirado 00:25
were reviewing interviews Wical had done of Black men who’d been involved in a hospital-based violence intervention program. I’ll let Wical and Glasgow tell the story in their conversation with Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium Executive Director Jaclyn Schildkraut, but on this episode of Policy Outsider we’re going to learn about their resulting work—the Glossary Project—and the efforts of Wical and Glasgow to get academics, practitioners, victims of gun violence, the media all speaking the same culturally competent language. William Wical is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Gun Violence Solutions in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University; Tyrique Glasgow is founder of Young Chances Foundation, a community-based organization in Philadelphia. This conversation was recorded in July 2025. Without further ado: the glossary project.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 01:40
Oh, thank you guys so
Jaclyn Schildkraut 01:45
much for joining us today. It’s great to have you
William Wical 01:47
here. Thanks for having us.
Tyrique Glasgow 01:49
It’s good to be here.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 01:51
So really excited about this conversation today. You guys have partnered on a new endeavor called the glossary project. What is this project seeking to do?
William Wical 02:01
I think this project really comes out of Tyrique and I’ve worked together analyzing qualitative data for my dissertation work around the emotional experiences of black men who survived a gunshot wound and received some kind of support from a hospital based violence intervention program. And so as Tyrique and I were looking through, you know, the interviews that I had done, one of the quotes that a program participant had said was it was something like when they came to my room, I didn’t want to talk to them, and Tyrique asked me, Do you know what they means? And I was like, of course, it’s talking about the person who came into the room. And Tyrique was like, no, no, no, no, well, and absolutely not that you know, in the community, they is often used to describe a very broad range of people from institutions outside of the community. So they can refer to police, hospital staff, social workers, people coming in from the hospital based programs. And so this comment around when they came into my room, I didn’t want to talk to them. And of course, really changes its meaning to to include this kind of insider outsider element, which totally changes the meaning of the quote. And so out of that, Tyrique, his kind of genius, is to be able to highlight these very easy ways to make simple improvements that have very broad implications. And so he suggested we should build a glossary to kind of collect different terms that are used by community members, practitioners and researchers, that are often misunderstood or confusing, and then kind of use this glossary of terms to help improve communication between those different stakeholders.
Tyrique Glasgow 03:46
And I think it’s important that when me and will met, we actually met at a conference where, you know, or as a speaking engagement, where we’re actually talking about gun violence and some of the resources and initiatives that are out there, some of the things that work it don’t work, you know. And we followed up, and you know, we started to talk about, you know, the interviews and the impact. But then, you know, personally, I started talking about myself as I am a gunshot victim survivor, but shot 11 times when I had back, laid the arms, went to jail. Live in a community where, you know, the media or research will show that gunshot victims or shootings in our community is normal, you know, during around a certain period of times, or, you know, when it the degrees or the weather gets a certain hotness. You know, shootings will occur. Mass shootings will occur. But I also told them about the generational trauma that happens around those and how people communicate to those responses, and when you get into a hospital, you know, that’s a snapshot of them because of the trauma that they already been through in those communities and and we’ll, you know, he was honest. He was like, Well, you know, research is that we don’t look at it that way. But I was like, Well, how can we bridge that gap? Because. As if you generally want to have impact on the people who have been affected by gun violence in those households, we have to speak the same, you know, you have to have a common voice and approach on how we going to get to an end goal. And this was, you know, the the glossary was an approach, because I was just thinking of ways that people will be able to come to the table. And how do you know, come to the table, people give you a menu. You know that menu should be something that us as academics and researchers can give the community. You know that menu that they can survive, you know, long term,
Jaclyn Schildkraut 05:38
such an interesting perspective, you know. And one of the things that jumps out at me from how you guys are describing this project is that you’re both coming at this from very different places, right? Will? You’re coming at it from the very academic side, and Tyrique, you’re coming at it both as sort of this practitioner voice, but also somebody with that lived experience. How do you guys think that your different but complementary perspectives are really going to benefit this work.
William Wical 06:04
Great question, I think, as a researcher, the benefit is extremely easy to identify, which is when you work closely with communities that are most impacted by gun violence as really an essential part of how you understand the causes and consequences of firearm injury and death. It lets you do totally different kinds of projects and ask different questions. And I think that that seems like a very generic answer, but the types of questions you ask really direct what kind of data you’re gathering, what kind of narratives you’re trying to challenge or speak to. And so for me, Tyrique said something probably a couple of weeks ago that really stuck out to me, and I think is a perfect way to describe what it what it’s like to work with somebody from a different background and perspective, which he said, If you want to do impactful work back the play of people on the ground. And so for me, that is like the guide point or guidepost to say my work is very grounded in what the community wants and how they’re defining problems, rather than the academic perspective, which is really about trying to explain the problem or explain people’s behavior. I’m much more interested in trying to understand what people think and feel and mean when they describe their lives.
Tyrique Glasgow 07:32
I think the accountability part just myself from being a victim of gun being shot, but also having the relationship in the community where the trust is not there, so building that relationship where people can understand that there are good people in academics and public safety and public health arenas that really want to help. And I believe that being having that lived experience, but understanding the the red tape that’s in academic and researchers and people feeling as though they’re being, you know, pimped for their their conversation, or for their trauma, but understanding that it’s a long term adjustment and for that, and I believe that, you know, will gets the big picture, because it’s This little things that matter when people know that, yes, they may have been shot, but they also have three children at home, and that gives people insight on why. Why are you standing on the corners from four to eight when data has shown this is the most high crime in your area. But if you had a conversation with these same young men. This is where the most traffic. This is where the most people come when they have an opportunity to probably make some funds, you know, to support their family. You know, to support them. So when, you know, there is a interview or session where they can receive a gift card for $100 or be able to get transportation from, you know, being a victim of a shooting incident, it’s not pointing a finger at them, it’s allowing them to look in the mirror and say, here’s an opportunity for me to change my ways. But also, you know, bring public safety and public health to our community, absolutely.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 09:18
And you know, one of the things that we really focus on here is thinking about how we can help inform policy through research. And it seems what you guys are both sort of touching upon is that without the voices of those lived experiences, right? How are we going to do that? How are we going to help communities if we’re not addressing their needs in their own context?
Tyrique Glasgow 09:39
And I think just really using some of the data that’s already there, like breakfast being the number one important meal of the day, air quality. Those are things where, if you know that they’re there, having that as part of having those things as a starting point of the conversation, of them knowing that you know you’re living in a. Area that there is no library, there’s a digital divide on internet access. These are some of the quality of life issues that are affecting you every day that may, you know, stop you or prohibit you from getting those resources. But have an approach of academic acts and what do they want? You know, they sometimes don’t understand that they are always not the shooters. Those are always not the ones who are doing it. These are, you know, their friends, you know, and if they’re grouped in tudos, sometimes the pressure of stepping out of that environment sometimes can cause a safety issue too. So having that communication table that knowing that safety at one aspect for researchers and academics, it’s not safety for the community.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 10:48
Absolutely, you know, so thinking kind of broadly about the impetus for this glossary project, right? You guys are wanting everybody to speak the same language. We have so many different stakeholders in this conversation. We have the academics, and we have the practitioners. We have, you know, the people who are impacted, either directly through gun violence or living in a community with gun violence. And then, of course, the policy makers. What do you guys see as some of the existing barriers that we’re facing with all of these groups talking about this issue differently, and what are the impacts of these barriers?
William Wical 11:19
Thanks. I think this is really kind of at the heart of of what the glossary project is trying to address. Right is there are some pretty significant barriers in the way that academics or practitioners or community members are describing what causes gun violence, what the kind of long term consequences. And the most easy one to highlight is academics are notorious for using jargon. And in places like the hospital where I was doing work, there was always kind of complex medical terminology as well as complex legal terminology. And from the academic side, a lot of academics are unfamiliar with the lived experiences of community members, or how they may be describing their experiences, and I think that the lack of knowledge about people’s experiences really contributes to feeling like they’re not understood, in large part because they’re not understood by academics, but also community members, I think, have rightful distrust of of the way that people describe them, exactly what Tyrique was describing earlier. There are kind of broad societal narratives about black men who survived gunshot wounds and black men in general that are very alienating and so kind of these broad barriers around how we talk about things, I think do disrupt the ability to have that kind of shared language. I think the kind of consequences of those barriers, right? One, effective communication becomes extremely difficult. And so concretely for community members, there is a real difficulty in navigating the healthcare and legal system, as well as the broad network of public health interventions and social services. Again, alienation from the practitioners and researchers, and I would say, rightly so, and then mistrust of those institutions which researchers and practitioners are often associated with. For researchers but don’t think they necessarily have the right questions, I wouldn’t blame them for not having the right questions. I, for sure did not have the right questions. Part of this is just a humility and research is you don’t necessarily have to have all of the right questions, you just have to be willing to listen to community members or those most impacted, to understand what those right questions are, and then very much so a disconnection in the goals of community members versus academics. Right academics have to publish papers and learn new things, whereas community members would like to have tangible changes in their lives, better safety, better access to resources, better transparency about what public health interventions are actually trying to accomplish and how those interventions and research will translate into promoting health equity. And lastly, for practitioners, I think there’s a real difficulty to build rapport with community members when practitioners are unaware of how community how community members are discussing their experiences. It really does signal something when you do not use the same words to describe something as the person you’re trying to connect with, as well as very significant difficulty in implementing prevention and intervention models in ways that are culturally and structurally appropriate,
Tyrique Glasgow 14:49
nothing just piggybacking off of what was talking about that’s really bringing it down to the community, to build that trust, some of the initiatives that we have done as a community. Was really try to bring the ABCs of data so they can understand. Why are we bringing researchers and people into the community to build that trust and letting them know that? You know, there’s different levels to data. There’s, you know, how we describe the ABCs was the A’s was the academic, the B was the bureaucracy, and C was community, you know, the academic portion of it, you know, a lot of studies and researchers, people should understand that, you know, it takes 17 years for those things to turn into some type of, you know, real, tangible things like Will was talking about. But the bureaucracy of the same data and research and papers has to go through a litany of scrutiny and funding and things who are actually to get the impact in the community, to have that outcome that you know we talk about. So I believe that you know, what we’re trying to do is, once you understand and can communicate on a level of the trauma that the community is going through, from the academic view and the bureaucracy part that you know, immediately these policies and procedures should be put in place immediately, you know, some of the suggestions and recommendations should be, you know, put in place. Because it’s not just the policy part. It’s the generational connections that you know, academics and researchers are having with the communities and that are affected by gun violence in our
Jaclyn Schildkraut 16:25
communities. You know, one thing I’m wondering is, you know, we also see sort of disparate ways in which different forms of gun violence are talked about, or different types of gun violence get more attention, even though they may be rare. How do you think you know, and this might be putting you on the spot a little bit, but in terms of kind of creating the shared vocabulary, do you think that it might better distribute the attention to these more commonly occurring problems, like gun violence in communities across
Tyrique Glasgow 16:56
America, just in a a mass shooting last week, and I would say one of the things that is challenging as a community leader and someone who knows the politics of media and research and you know how things are distributed, but also understanding that the community is always the picking of of everything. When the mass shooting happened, we there was three lives that were taken. It was nine people injured. It was on a block where a few years ago, a three year old got killed getting our hair braided. So you know that data was coming up. This is, you know, gun violence in this area, it was the worst. But every community, every senior and youth and on the block, wasn’t understanding why they were getting the blame for it. Why? When they turned on the TV, it was saying people were scared to walk up and down the block. Went on that same block, there was a basketball court that been there for two and a half years because the recreation center down the street was shut down, and there was no shootings on this block at all, you know. So when the media was coming to talk to him, all they kept talking about was the good stuff. But when the media put the stuff on TV for the first clip, it was really a sound bite, and that hurt the community, you know. So when people and agencies started to come down after the community seen the news clips, they wasn’t receptive to talking to the social workers who were there to help with therapeutic measures to help with because it wasn’t communicated that the community wasn’t the problem, it was the issue of gun violence. So I believe that even as a mass shooting, people will feel as though it’s their fault that it happened in their community when data is showing when it happens. Here is how we’re going to help you, but that’s not how it’s communicated to the community.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 19:12
Well, it seems like that lack of that shared vocabulary, the understanding of how to message, which is, I think, what the impetus of your project is, it seems like it has even broader implications for also how the media is leading this conversation in many respects, and you know, how it’s breeding that distrust that you’ve been talking about throughout our conversation, so kind of thinking about that, you know, both from a prevention and a response side. You know, this might seem like an obvious question, but what are the benefits of your project? How do you guys see this helping you know exactly what Tyrique is talking about here.
William Wical 19:50
That’s a difficult question at some level, because when it comes to providing support and care to. To communities most impacted by gun violence. We have not, as a country, been particularly interested in doing that, so having the language to understand what people are describing is only one part right. It has to be paired with significant resources and interest to to try and support the lives of people who have been impacted by gun violence. So I think that the glossary project is one step towards raising awareness that the experiences of people and the way they describe their experiences give us pretty clear ways to support them after, after something happens, and pretty clear interventions and preventative efforts, right? So people describe the basic needs that they have that are not being met. Those are very important ways to kind of improve community safety. Something I would like to highlight is Tyrique cans out free fresh fruit and vegetables every day in his neighborhood. That’s not typically thought of as like a primary intervention for gun violence, but it absolutely is supporting the basic needs of people where they may not feel like they have to go hustle in the corner, or they may not have to, you know, do something that they really don’t want to. So I think that those type of things come out of this kind of project.
Speaker 4 21:30
Is the community thinks about safety
William Wical 21:34
and health very different from a lot of academics, and that they recognize the structural drivers of why there are high rates of gun violence and the structural drivers structural drivers are the exact same reasons that there are not libraries in grace very that there are not, you know, access to educational support, stuff like that. And so I think this project, in centering the perspectives of the community, it has very practical implications for improving the quality of research. It improves the quality of care that can be provided to people, but it also really hammers home that there needs to be significant changes in how we think about and talk about people who survive gun violence and are impacted on a daily basis.
Tyrique Glasgow 22:21
You know, that’s what I like. Well, you know, he it gives, you know, context to and credibility to me as a community leader, someone who lives and, you know, the community where the subjects are interviewed. And it, for me, it gives credible research. You know, because the individuals that were actually talking to their family members, their their grandparents, their their block captains, they actually know what’s needed, and it’s and it has a truly impactful, you know, way that they can navigate the conversations, not only with academics and researchers, but their families. You know, for me, it will build a generational change that bridges not only the research but communication. So when people understand, when you say, I want help, it’s not just for that 45 minutes of the session. I may mean my kids, my aunt, my uncles, and when I specifically say help, it’s not for that day, it’s for tomorrow. And tomorrow, I may talk about something that happened 1015, years ago, but in research and academic glossaries, you may not understand that trauma is communicated through other people’s bodies. So when a young man on the corner is talking about him being hungry, he may be eating because he’s on the block every day, but he know he got a little sister in the house. We don’t want to come out here around his friends and old heads, because they may take advantage of and for him, if he has to risk his life and his safety to make sure that the ladies that are inside of his house is taken care of, he will do that. When a person like will meets him at the bedside and he’s talking about, what help do you need? He’s probably going to be talking about his household. It’s probably not going to be talking about his self. It’s probably going to be talking about the grandmom who raised some who make sure that his sister and his mom and his dad is still being taken care of. And that’s what I believe, is glossary, not only that me and will, but other institutions know and feel they’re missing something, and sometimes it’s just communication.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 24:44
You know, one of the things I learned from reading, you know, sort of your project overview, is that you guys have been conducting workshops with stake, with different stakeholders who are part of this conversation. What are you guys learning through these sessions?
William Wical 24:58
The clearest thing that. We’re learning is there’s a lot of opportunity for growth, and that is really only possible when we’re actually working together, right? So Tyrique and our colleague Sarah Solomon from the University of Pennsylvania, we held a workshop to really start to think about what, what does it look like to develop a shared kind of vocabulary and a shared way of talking. And out of that, that workshop with community members, academics and practitioners, there was a real emphasis on a need for transparency and an acknowledgement of the way that these institutions that that are operating in the community, whether it’s a large research institution, hospital, community based organization, right that those places often have significant histories that have to be acknowledged, and until you acknowledge the ways that those institutions have harmed communities, it becomes really difficult to develop those bi directional relationships. And so there’s opportunities for growth that that are really reliant on all stakeholders showing up to the table with humility, with an openness to learn, and really kind of building off of, you know, the work that has been done, and also looking towards the future as to what kind of work can be done with partnerships that are that are relational and not just kind of transactional.
Tyrique Glasgow 26:30
Yeah, and again, you know, I’m just going to double down on the generational connection that it has, not only between the communication but how people view their lives, you know, when you talk to an older individual who are is in their 50s, you know. You talk to them and they talk about how you know they wasn’t that smart, how they were running the street, and how they see their trauma today as normal, you know? And you talk to a young person who is sitting at the same table and think that this is the way of life, but will look at will and like, well, what are you talking about? Like, what does this mean? You know, they had their child there, who is two years old, and they have no idea that these are the people who are making decisions on their lives, you know, because if you’re talking about putting a library in the community, if you’re talking about having therapeutic sessions for individuals that are outside of the gun violence target bracket, because they were, you know, affected by it, they just, they just are older, but they’re still trying To find their footing, and that’s why I really respect, you know, Sarah and will, because they come up with initiatives and ways to meet the community where they’re at. And what better way than the Lego is where you have to build your own community, build your own you know, way of communicating, and have to talk about that, be transparent on why do you build the bank? Why was the first thing that you built was a swimming pool, you know? And other people may think, Oh, they just want the money. No, because they know that when they cash any checks or they get robbed, there’s no safe places for their things. You know. Kids build pools because there is no place for them to go swimming. You know Norman, that’s normal for other people to just go swimming when it’s hot. But if you take that in a context where you know, academics and researchers and policy makers will look in the mirror and say, Well, we know when the heat rises in these communities, because we see the heat response and index that we’re doing is 20 degrees higher. We need foods. We need essential services to help these people. It brings trust, and it allows our community to see that their words are not just words that are actually our actions.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 28:55
You know, sounds like you guys, you know, not only are coming from such an honorable place, and frankly, you know, a place that should have been come from a long time ago, right? We all need to be speaking the same language. But it also seems like you’re gathering so much information through these sessions and through talking to folks who have these lived experiences. What do you hope comes from all this? In terms of the resource resources that you guys are developing, how do you hope that they’re used moving forward down the line?
William Wical 29:25
It would be a goal to have the glossary be publicly available and easily accessible to people, and so it has to be a living glossary as well, and that the way we talk about violence and trauma and care now is going to be different from how we talk about it in a year, in two years, in five years, and this is something that I think is a significant barrier that the project hopefully will address, is the ways that violence was talked about in the late 1990s And early 2000s doesn’t have that much applicability to to what’s happening now the social context has totally changed with the, you know, kind of rise of social media, growing inequality. It’s just a totally different kind of world that we’re navigating. And so having a living glossary that is constantly updated, that can be updated for people in specific places, because the way they talk about violence in Philadelphia versus Baltimore versus Washington, DC, it’s very different, right? And so having kind of a locally specific set of terms that people can can look at and say, Oh, that’s what this person meant when they said that. I think would be very, very important. And, you know, kind of something to aspire to, to include stakeholders from different states and different cities, to to add terms that they think are most important to describe what’s happening in neighborhoods across the country.
Tyrique Glasgow 31:03
For me, it’s, again, it’s just really having our community at the table so they can understand that their voices are heard, you know, in a working document. You know, I truly believe it’s something that we can navigate through the social media sphere, through the seniors, so people can always put their new language, their new way of how they want support and also how they want to be heard. You know, a lot of people don’t know that the stress and trauma sometimes comes from people not understanding where they’re coming from and where they’re trying to go. So hopefully this could be a bridge that can smooth that transition from the academics and community members, so we can all have a common goal that’s successful.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 31:46
Well, I, for 1am, very excited to see where this goes and how you guys continue to develop it in the coming months, years and even beyond. Tyrique will thank you so much for joining us today.
Joel Tirado 32:02
Thanks again to Jackie Schildkraut, Will Wical, and Tyrique Glasgow for that important conversation. If you liked this episode, please rate, subscribe, and share. It will help others find the podcast and help us deliver the latest in public policy research. All of our episodes are available for free wherever you stream your podcasts and transcripts are available on our website. I’m Joel Tirado; until next time.
Policy Outsider is presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York. The Institute conducts cutting-edge nonpartisan public policy research and analysis to inform lasting solutions to the challenges facing New York state and the nation. Learn more at rockinst.org or by following RockefellerInst. That’s i n s t on social media. Have a question comment or idea? Email us at [email protected].
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