Tina Chery of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute spoke at the conference.

"We can’t get to violence prevention without getting to youth," said Rodney Hammond, director of the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who opened the Fifth Annual National Survivors of Violence Conference, held at HSPH on November 8 and 9.

In 1996, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, director of the Division of Public Health Practice (DPHP), coordinated and convened the National Forum for Survivors of Violence, in Chicago, IL. Discussions at that forum led to the first of the survivors conferences in 1998, which have run every year since then.

"You have inspired and energized a recommitment to violence prevention in this country," Prothrow-Stith said to this year’s attendees.

Also offering opening remarks was Tina Chery, director of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, whose son was killed in crossfire between two gangs in Boston several years ago.

This year’s theme was "From Anger to Action–A United Voice for Prevention." More than 100 people attended the two-day event and listened to more than two dozen speakers, including the director of the Office of Victims of Crime at the US Department of Justice and the national director of the Million Mom March.

Brian Gibbs of the DPHP emceed the two-day event. Roland Smart, also of DPHP, was the conference coordinator.

The CDC first became involved in violence prevention in 1980 when epidemiologists from the center worked with law enforcement agents to investigate a series of child murders in Georgia. Since then, the CDC has monitored death and injuries from violence, tested prevention strategies, and encouraged the adoption of violence prevention programs and policies, said Hammond.

US homicide rates, while not the highest in the world, are 10 times greater than the combined rates of other developed countries with similarly established economies, he said.

"There is something different with the US," said Hammond.

The lower rates in other developed countries demonstrate that violence is indeed preventable, he added.

Research has focused on the availability of weapons. To help address the problem, the CDC has chosen several violence prevention priorities, including one focused on America’s youth.

	Rodney Hammond of the CDC

A national survey in 2001 of American high school students revealed that more than 17 percent of respondents had carried a weapon during the month preceding the survey. More than 33 percent had been in a fight during the previous year.

In the same survey, more than eight percent of the students reported having been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Yet, added Hammond, school-associated violent deaths are extremely rare, despite fears produced by high-profile mass murders at sites like Columbine High School in 1999.

Using a 2001 Surgeon General’s report on youth violence, Hammond listed prevention strategies that tend to work, according to specific criteria used by the Office of the Surgeon General. Those strategies included: monitoring children’s behavior, building school capacity, participating in youth development programs, home visits by trained professionals, and parent training. Strategies that do not seem to work as well include peer counseling, holding children back from moving to the next grade, gun buy-back programs, firearm training, and grouping high-risk youth in recreational programs.

Hammond acknowledged the importance of discussing prevention strategies and policies with survivors of violence and with families whose loved ones were killed by violent acts.

"The survivor community extends a unique perspective that goes beyond data," he said. "The community speaks with a voice of authority that can shape issues."

For more information about the National Survivors of Violence Conference, visit http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/php/temp%20web/web%20ready/Sibsconf.htm.