What Health Care Practitioners Can Do to Prevent Youth Violence
According to the Commission for the Prevention of Youth Violence, health care professionals can:
- Become educated in firearms injury prevention, including adolescent assault, homicide, and suicide.
- Encourage medical, nursing, and public health schools and professional societies to provide undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education in the causes and prevention of violence and competencies in understanding and working with communities.
- Routinely screen for and counsel patients about firearm safety.
- Regularly screen for and treat or refer patients for help for alcohol and other drug abuse problems.
- Participate in practice-based violence research and advocate for resources to support research, including ongoing public health data collection and surveillance.
- Advocate for and adhere to practice guidelines or protocols for assessing high-risk violence situations and behaviors, appropriate treatment and referrals, and counseling and screening from the prenatal period through adulthood.
- Disseminate information about the root causes and risk factors for violence.
- Add to patient examinations a violence history that addresses exposure to violence; safety/security issues; effects of trauma; attitudes toward weapon carrying, aggression, and fighting; and stressors in the family and community.
- Strengthen the documentation of abuse and histories of family violence in both individual and group records.
- Volunteer to serve local schools as epidemiologists, health care providers, and crisis team members.
- Volunteer to serve local community prevention initiatives as mentors, supervisors, and advocates.
- Establish a network of referral services to make it easier for youth and their parents or caretakers to access resources.
- Advocate for public policies and resources to address the sources of violence.
- Promote the use of family-based strategies such as multisystemic therapy and functional family therapy for troubled youth. [1]
For more information, see:
The Role of the Pediatrician in Youth Violence Prevention in Clinical Practice and at the Community Level (1999). Policy Statement - American Academy of Pediatrics
Youth and Violence. Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health: Connecting the Dots to Prevent Violence (2000) - Commission for the Prevention of Youth Violence
Violence Prevention Programs and Resources - American Medical Association
This page provides a description of programs and resources available to health care providers, communities, schools, and other organizations on the topic of youth violence.
Recognizing and Preventing Youth Violence: A Guide for Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals (2001) - Massachusetts Medical Society
Youth Violence Prevention: How Does the Health Care Sector Respond? (2001) - National Health Policy Forum
Youth Violence and the Health Professions : Core Competencies for Effective Practice (2001) - The Southern California Developing Center for Youth Violence Prevention and the University of Southern California Department of Family Medicine
- Commission for the Prevention of Youth Violence. (2000). Youth and Violence. Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health: Connecting the Dots to Prevent Violence, p. 28.