Integrating Public Health Prevention Efforts to Decrease Violence and Unintentional Injuries in Children

Violence and unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States.  Traditionally prevention strategies have not fostered partnerships among violence and unintentional injury practitioners and scholars, leading to fragmented program development and policy approaches that could have been much more effective should collaborations been developed and nurtured.  Presently efforts are taking place in our College of Public Health to develop and implement pedagogical strategies, including graduate courses and fieldwork, which allow students the opportunity to develop targeted interventions to decrease both violence and unintentional injuries in children. The students utilize theoretical and epidemiologic approaches in addition to the constructs of the integrated model developed by Peterson and Brown.  This model focuses on sociocultural factors, child-based factors, and caregiver-based factors as background (consistent) and immediate contributors to child abuse and neglect and unintentional injuries.  For example, a caregiver background contributor may include lack of parenting skills and an immediate contributor would be need for control and ineffective discipline that leads to both abuse/neglect and unintentional injuries. Resiliency factors include addressing the parenting skills and environment through home visitations, community programs and outreach activities coordinated by public health agencies.  Example projects will be provided that highlight the overlap of risk and resiliency factors related to violence and unintentional injuries in children and foster comprehensive injury-related policy changes at the local, state, and national level.