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The emergence of evidence-supported interventions allows hospitals the opportunity to reduce future reinjury among patients who are violently injured. However, hospital knowledge of these interventions and their perceived role in violence prevention is unknown. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created new legal requirements for non-profit hospitals to conduct community health needs assessments (CHNA) every three years to maintain not-for-profit status. In turn, this allows an empiric evaluation of hospital recognition and response to community violence. To do so, this study performed a content analysis of hospital CHNAs from the 20 U.S. cities with the highest violent crime rates. A total of 77 CHNAs were examined for specific violence-related keywords as well as whether violence prevention was listed as a priority community need. Overall, 74% of CHNAs mentioned violence-related terms and only 32% designated violence prevention as a priority need. When discussed, 88% of CHNAs referenced community violence, 42% intimate partner or sexual violence, and 22% child abuse. This study suggests that hospitals may lack awareness of violence as an actionable, preventable public health issue. Further, evidence-based program models are available to hospitals that can reduce the recurrence of assaultive injuries.

To date, two fundamental approaches to understanding and responding to violence have been articulated: a criminal/juvenile justice approach and a public health approach. In this presentation, we will present a third approach based upon human rights. A human rights framework for understanding and responding to youth and school violence is comprised of four fundamental components. First, it provides principles and norms, as well as a positive vision, for understanding and contextualizing the rights of children and their caretakers. Second, this framework makes visible multiple forms of violence, humiliation, and abuse—whether reflected in behavior, educational climate, curricula, neighborhood norms (e.g., retaliatory violence), discipline practices, or in regulations or policies—as infractions of fundamental human rights. Instead of focusing on incidents of violence, a human rights framework monitors and assesses whether human rights are appropriately accorded within the educational and neighborhood setting. Third, a human rights framework recognizes that human rights are not passively given but rather require participatory engagement, critical reflection, and meaningful dialogue among all stakeholders. As such, human rights framework establishes guidelines not only for the content and purpose of what is taught in educational settings, particularly as it impinges upon the rights of children, but, as importantly, for the form of the pedagogical process itself. And fourth, a human rights framework dictates responsibilities monitor and adhere to established rights and requires all individuals, groups, and institutions to remedy human rights violations in whatever guise they appear. Particular attention must be paid to the examination of human rights’ adherence in one’s own community. In addition, a human rights framework requires the adoption of preventive, corrective, and therapeutic programs and strategies. Such strategies will be illustrated through reference to human rights education practices and programs, as well as through a case study of youth community organizing.

Violence reduction efforts should be modeled on noncontagious diseases, which have as their root cause environmental determinants, not contagious diseases.

The authors quantify and unpack the prevalence and effects of bullying on children and adolescents before prescribing provisos for schools to consider when planning preventive and responsive approaches to bullying.

This article synthesizes the current research on bullying prevention and intervention in order to provide guidance to schools seeking to select and implement antibullying strategies. Evidence-based best practices that are shared across generally effective antibullying approaches are elucidated, and these strategies are grounded in examples garnered from model antibullying programs as implemented in contemporary schools. Future directions for practice, research, and policy are also explicated.

Individual, group, and family counseling are invariably included in bullying prevention programs and strategies. Nevertheless, if bullying is treated exclusively as a problem between bullies and victims or as a family problem, counseling efforts will have limited impact. Counseling strategies must be articulated within a systemic approach to bullying in schools. In particular, the roles that students and adults play in actively or passively reinforcing bullying behavior must be addressed through school-wide and family efforts to change the norms and climate with respect to bullying. The pertinent literature is reviewed and steps to implement a systemic prevention strategy are outlined.

I prevention activities are a defining characteristic of the modern trauma center. Violent injuryVwith a 5-year reinjury rate as high as 45%Vrepresents a priority area for preventive intervention. Advances in trauma care increase the likelihood that a patient will survive violent injury but do nothing to reduce the chances that they will be reinjured after leaving the hospital. The recurrent nature of violent injury strains trauma systems financially, and the absence of preventive intervention is inconsistent with trauma centers’ commitment to providing optimal care. Hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) offer a strategy to address these issues. HVIPs combine brief in-hospital intervention with intensive community-based case management and provide targeted services to high-risk populations to reduce risk factors for reinjury and retaliation while cultivating protective factors. Rigorous evaluations of HVIPs have demonstrated promising results in preventing violent reinjury, violent crime, and substance misuse. Violent injury, as a focus of HVIPs, is generally defined as any injury intentionally inflicted by another person by any mechanism, excluding family, intimate partner, and sexual violence. The latter are excluded because they generally involve different dynamics and intervention strategies.

This article presents data gathered from young people in a poor urban community in New York City, the South Bronx. It seeks to help public health professionals better understand young people’s perceptions of violence in the context of their daily lives. Sources of data include a street survey, five focus groups, interviews with incarcerated young males, and observations of several youth programs. These data suggest that violence is pervasive in the lives of both young men andwomen, although gender plays an important role in shaping the experience of violence. Other factors that influence the experience of violence include patterns of substance use, availability and use of weapons, and a perception that the police do not respect young people. Despite numerous challenges, many young people do take actions to reduce violence. The article suggests actions public health professionals can take to strengthen the ability of families, schools, youth organizations, and young people themselves to reduce violence in low-income urban communities.

SummaryChick blastoderms at H & H stage 8-8+ were cultured in vitro on 1 ml aliquots of medium containing either 50 or 100 μg of lysergic acid diethylamide. Following 20 hr incubation, drug-treated embryos failed to demonstrate any increase in mortality or growth-depressing effects. At both dose levels, however, disturbances were observed in fusion of the neural folds. A significant reduction in the mean number of somites per embryo was observed in embryos exposed to 50 μg of LSD.