Citation

D'Inverno AS, Bartholow BN. Am. J. Public Health 2021; 111(Suppl 1): S10-S16.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2021.306344

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Youth violence (YV) is a major public health problem in the United States that has substantial short- and long-term negative impacts on youths, their families, and communities. Homicide was the third leading cause of death among youths aged 10 to 24 years in 2019, with 90.3% of these homicides being firearm related.1 Each day, approximately 1163 youths are treated in emergency departments for nonfatal assault-related injuries, totaling 424 374 youths in 2019.1 Data from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey show that, in the 12 months before the survey, 7.4% of high-school students reported being threatened or injured with a weapon at school and 4.4% reported carrying a gun for nonrecreational purposes.2 Approximately 9% of students reported not going to school at least once in the past 30 days because they felt unsafe, either at school or on their way to or from school.2 In addition, in 2019, about one in five students reported being bullied at school and being in a physical fight at least once in the past year.2

Exposure to violence during childhood is an adverse experience that can have lasting negative impacts on health and development as a victim, perpetrator, or witness and can increase the likelihood of future violence perpetration and victimization, physical and mental health problems, chronic diseases, substance abuse, academic challenges, and suicide (http://bit.ly/38bbydS). YV is connected to other forms of violence and shares several risk and protective factors with child abuse and neglect, adolescent dating violence, sexual violence, suicide, and adult intimate partner violence (http://bit.ly/38gAYH0).

Violence was recognized in 1985 by US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop as a public health problem (http://bit.ly/3sS9WgL), and, in 2001, US Surgeon General David Satcher released the first Surgeon General's report on YV in the United States. This report described the public health approach to YV prevention and called for rigorous research on prevention strategies.3

Since then, our understanding of the nature and causes of YV has grown, and effective violence prevention strategies have been developed at multiple levels of the social‒ecological model (SEM; http://bit.ly/3c3VmfA; https://bit.ly/31MRFqq). The SEM considers the interconnected relationships...

Language: en