Health and Developmental Considerations in Youth Violence Prevention

The response to and prevention of youth violence has increasingly become a priority across a wide spectrum of federal policies and practices as evidenced by the National Forum for Youth Violence Prevention, a multi-agency initiative developed by the White House and run out of the Office of Justice Programs in the US Department of Justice. Among the key components of this initiative has been an effort to apply the growing understanding of health and developmental factors as a central element in developing and implementing effective strategies for both the prevention of violence and the effective response to youth involved in violence. This presentation will describe the broad efforts of the National Forum with specific emphasis on how health and developmental factors have influence this work and the importance of incorporating the growing understanding of these issues into advancing the work in this field.