Pina Violano is a clinical associate professor and director of community engagement at Quinnipiac University’s School of Nursing. She previously served as manager of the Injury & Violence Prevention Program at Yale’s Adult & Pediatric Level 1 Trauma Centers. She has longstanding leadership and expertise in reducing unintentional and intentional injuries through the development and implementation of effective evidenced-based injury prevention strategies on a local, state, and national level that, in 2007, led to the designation of Injury Free Coalition for Kids of New Haven for which she served as the program director and principal investigator for over 12 years. Her collaboration with street-based outreach worker programs and victim service providers to reduce gun and community violence within Connecticut’s highest violent communities culminated in the creation of Connecticut’s first hospital-based violence intervention program (HVIP).

Dr. Violano has extensive experience in leading community-based participatory research efforts to reduce gun-related injuries and death through local, statewide, and national gun buy-back programs and the promotion of safe storage of firearms events. In 2017, she cofounded Swords to Plowshares Northeast, a nonprofit violence prevention organization that provides jobs and opportunities for youth to make positive impacts in their communities as well as repurposes guns from gun buybacks into gardening tools, which are distributed to local community gardens. In August 2021, she was sought out by The Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity, & Opportunity (CWCSEO) of the Connecticut General Assembly and appointed as the advisory fellow and primary administrator for Connecticut’s Gun Violence Intervention & Prevention Advisory Committee, which led to Connecticut’s Commission on Community Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention.