Online Program

292683
Not everyone is safe at home: Youth perspectives on violence around the world


Wednesday, November 6, 2013 : 11:10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Beth Marshall, DrPH, Population Family and Reporductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Alex Maher, RN, MSN/MPH Candidate, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD
Kristin N. Mmari, DrPH, MA, Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Globally about 250,000 young people die as a result of homicide annually – almost half of all homicides in the world involve young people 10 -29. The mortality from youth violence is a small fraction of the physical, social, and economic impacts. Violence prevention is a mature field within public health and the literature is full of factors associated with youth violence. We examined youth perspectives on youth violence from four urban environments around the globe.

The Well-being of Adolescents in Vulnerable Environments (WAVE) is a study of young people in urban environments. In Baltimore, MD, Johannesburg, South Africa, Shanghai, China, and New Delhi, India, researchers conducted 20 in-depth interviews, a Photovoice project and between 4 and 8 community mapping and focus groups. 20 key informant interviews were conducted among adults who worked with young people. Yung people described youth on youth violence with a survival of the fittest mentality. While adolescents in Dehli and Shaghai more often cited safes places in their communities, young people in Baltimore and Johannesburg were often unable to come up with any safe places. Across sites contributing factors including alcohol use, families, and gender roles arose frequently, though they operated differently. For example, gender-based power differences were seen as contributors to intimate partner violence in Baltimore, but in Johannesburg and Dheli alcohol and lack of police intervention played a larger role. Interventions designed to address youth violence will need to account for contributing factors as well as how those factors operate in individual contexts.

Learning Areas:

Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Program planning
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Compare youth perspectives on violence in urban settings around the world

Keyword(s): Adolescents, International, Youth Violence

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a co-investigator on the WAVE project and was in the field collecting the qualitative data. I also worked on coding the data and the analysis of the data for this presentation. I have worked with adolescents in East Baltimore for over ten years in both hands on projects and through research projects.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.