Youth Violence

The following summary of interventions aimed at preventing youth violence was written for America’s Promise, an initiative supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, by Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH and Dawna S. Fuqua-Whitley, MA, of the Emory Center for Injury Control at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, and Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH, of the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Washington. It was published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in September, 1996. We include it here since it is a recent, up-to-date review of this topic.

Introduction

Scope of the problem

Concluding remarks

Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General (2001)

The interventions discussed in this report are divided into the following three main categories:

Prevention Interventions

I. Effective interventions

• Prevention of unwanted pregnancy

Infancy and early childhood intervention programs

• Home visitation
• Parenting programs
• Early childhood education
• Teaching problem-solving skills
• Marital and family therapy
• Innovative teaching and classroom organization
• Supervised after-school recreation
• Innovative policing

II. Less effective interventions

Individual-level interventions

• Mentoring programs
• Violence-prevention curricula for adolescents
• Peer mediation
• Peer counseling
• Education to prevent drug abuse
• Vocational training and employment programs

Community-level interventions

• Neighborhood "clean-ups"
• Juvenile curfews
• Gun buy-backs
• "Anti-violence" advertising campaigns

III. Untested interventions

• Family literacy programs
• Firearm safety training
• Disrupting illegal gun trafficking to youth
• Support groups for victims

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