When his eight-year-old daughter Alexandra quietly stares out the window for a long period of time, Joseph Chéry knows what she is thinking: Why is my brother gone? Chéry tells the little girl that God has called her older brother to heaven to do some much needed "peace work." Though she still waits and watches, says her father, she accepts this explanation, five years after Louis Brown was gunned down on Geneva Avenue in the Dorchester section of Boston, caught in a crossfire between two gangs.

Chéry is president of the Boston-based National Coalition of Survivors for Violence Prevention, Inc. and an advocate for preventing violence through programs that promote "peacemaking."

In June he and other members of his group joined antiviolence advocates from around the country for a two-day conference at the School titled "Unheard Voices: Sibling-Survivors of Violence." Hosted by the School's violence prevention programs, the event spotlighted an overlooked area in the study of violence: the consequences of murder and brutality on siblings and other family members of victims.

"This is the first step towards filling a huge professional gap," says Deborah Prothrow-Stith, associate dean and director of the School's Division of Public Health Practice, which houses violence prevention programs.

"There are no protocols. There is no training. There is no public policy in place to allow families to heal and get the support that they need following a tragic visitation of violence." Chéry, who until recently ran drug and substance abuse programs for the city of Boston, adds that the conference "really helped us begin a national dialogue on the need to focus some attention on sibling survivors."

While there are few, if any, studies zeroing in on siblings of victims, other research suggests that siblings might be particularly affected by violence to their brothers or sisters. For example, studies have shown that young people who witness violence are at increased risk for having problems in school, developing psychological disorders, becoming victims of violence, and committing violent acts themselves. Moreover, teenagers are disproportionately affected by violent crime, both as victims and witnesses, according to Chéry's survivors group. The organization reports statistics showing that approximately one in six teenage students have been robbed at gun- or knife-point, and a similar number know someone who has died violently. Eight percent say they have had their lives threatened.

"We need to teach children peace," said Clementine Barfield, a member of the Coalition's advisory board and a conference participant. Barfield is the founder and director of Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD), an organization that offers support groups for children who have been witnesses to violence. Children have all kinds of words to describe violence, said Barfield, "but when we ask them to describe peace, they have only a few words to describe that."

Prothrow-Stith, who moderated the conference, has been researching violence prevention for 20 years. She is the author of Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents (1987) and Deadly Consequences (1991), which argues for a public health approach to violence. The National Coalition of Survivors for Violence Prevention grew out of a 1996 conference in Chicago that Prothrow-Stith helped organize with support from the Charles Mott Foundation. The School's June conference was sponsored by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prothrow-Stith and the planners hope to make the gathering an annual event.