Violence is a major issue facing youth, and it comes in many different forms. For Youth Violence Prevention week, the Children’s Safety Network is hosting a webinar featuring, Howard Spivak, Director, Division of Violence Prevention at the CDC. Dr. Spivak will be joined by Sarah Bacon, Lead Behavioral Scientist for CDC’s National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention. The webinar will provide an overview of the magnitude and burden of youth violence and how CDC is addressing current challenges in the public health approach to youth violence. Effective existing prevention strategies will be explored, as will directions for expanding the evidence for population-level impact. The webinar will close with a discussion of the ongoing work across federal agencies to streamline efforts and bring effective violence prevention to a national scale.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the magnitude of youth violence across different demographic groups
- Understand key evidence-based youth violence prevention strategies
- Understand new directions for moving the science and practice of youth violence prevention forward
- Understand how ongoing collaborations across Federal agencies will lead to more effective prevention efforts
About the Presenters:
Howard Spivak is currently the Director of the Division of Violence Prevention in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Sarah Bacon is a behavioral scientist in the Division of Violence Prevention at the CDC. Dr. Spivak has been involved in the field of violence prevention for 30 years, specifically focusing on youth violence prevention. He co-founded the Boston Youth Violence Prevention Program, the first such program in the nation using the public health model as it core strategy. He established the first Office of Youth Violence Prevention in the country based in a state health department while serving as Deputy Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. He is the co-author of two books on youth violence prevention: Murder Is No Accident and Sugar and Spice and No Longer Nice. Dr. Sarah Bacon is the lead scientist for the National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention. Dr. Bacon is a criminologist and youth violence prevention expert with twenty years’ experience spanning the fields of law enforcement, academia, and public health.
CSN hosted a #YouthViolence chat on Twitter with CDC immediately following the webinar. The archive of the Twitter chat is available on Storify.