The rising tide of youth violence in Boston and elsewhere can be stemmed, but the effort will require increased public health strategies rather than simply more police efforts, said Deborah Prothrow-Stith, HSPH professor of public health practice. She delivered the final talk in the "Hot Topics" series on August 14.
"We are dealing with a preventable problem, but right now we are putting most of our money into the criminal-justice side of things,'' she said. "That is not prevention. We've got to get into the communities where children are at higher risk and do some of the things that we know will help them.''
Prothrow-Stith, who was the first female public health commissioner for Massachusetts, is a leader in the efforts to have youth violence defined as a public health problem.
She noted that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city of Boston experienced a dramatic decline in youth homicide rates, and the drop was attributed to a plethora of programs aimed at reaching such children. However, the rates have increased again in recent years as the number of youth outreach workers has been cut from 120 to 30, she said.
"The cutback was real and measurable and had an effect,'' she said.
Prothrow-Stith said criminal justice efforts are important, but deal with the problem after the fact. "I don't think the public health and criminal justice approaches are in conflict with each other,'' she said. "They are complementary.''
But putting all of the funding into criminal justice to fight youth violence is like trying to prevent lung cancer by putting all funding into treatment and none into efforts such as smoking-cessation programs.
She said that violence prevention takes school-based educational programs for all children, as well as special programs that target at-risk children. She noted that a study done at Boston Medical Center showed that 10 percent of children in Boston had witnessed a gunshot or stabbing by age six.
A growing area of concern is the rising rate of violence among girls, she said. It is due in part to the "marketing of violence'' to girls in the media, she said. "We have to focus on the culture of violence,'' she added.
—ML
Copyright, 2007, President and Fellows of Harvard College
