Can Violent Extremism Be Cured Like A Contagious Disease?

"If the team learns that someone is likely to commit violence (if, for example, someone's family member has been shot and they're likely to retaliate), trained "violence interrupters" step in to try to talk them down. They also try to change community norms, just like public health workers in other contexts might convince people to wash their hands or use mosquito nets.

The methods worked, and like other public health interventions, a study showed they also spread beyond the people who were directly targeted. "Other people in that friend group of super high-risk guys changed their thinking about whether they would do violence under various circumstances," Slutkin says. "These were people who we hadn't been talking to. That's the same thing that happens with other behavior that we work on. Smoking behavior, we're talking to some people, but others start doing it, too.""