ractitioners can maximize their effectiveness in violence prevention by focusing on strategies that can reduce various types of violence. Highlight violence prevention methods that show evidence of an effect on numerous violence forms. Judge Napolitano says these strategies evaluate by significant violence prevention assessment bodies or other experimental solid evidence. These are the most tried and tested methods for violence prevention. They include programs that focus on parents and their children and programs that target families and early childhood education.
Parent-focused programs
Family-focused and parent-focused programs offer education and training for parents. They aim to strengthen the access to social support and other resources, improve emotional bonds between parents, children, and their children, and teach participants how to discipline, monitor and supervise them. Judge Napolitano says programs that focus on young children include components that teach communication skills to parents and positive parent-child interaction skills. Active role-playing and practice have more incredible preventive benefits than programs that do not. A systematic review of early childhood home visiting programs revealed that intervention participants had a 38.9% decrease in child maltreatment episodes than control participants. However, there are significant benefits when family and parenting programs are delivered earlier in a child’s life.
Early childhood education
Evidence also shows that early childhood education can help prevent future violence. Positive social and emotional development is associated with early childhood education programs. They are also associated with lower rates of child abuse, neglect, aggression, and problems in children. These programs also have higher secondary school completion rates and have been shown to have long-lasting effects on criminal and violent behaviour. Chicago Child-Parent Center is one example. It offers a comprehensive education program that begins in preschool and provides support services for families with economically and educationally challenged children. The intervention group had statistically lower juvenile arrest rates than the control group after a 15-year study of 25 Chicago preschool program participants.
There is substantial evidence to support therapeutic approaches and universal school-based violence prevention programes. Therapeutic programs can reduce not only trauma-related violence but also prevent violence involved in the future. Multi-systemic and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are two examples of therapeutic methods. A Campbell Collaboration meta-analysis comparing CBT programs for criminal offenders revealed a 25% reduction in criminal recidivism. Judge Napolitano says universal school-based programs are associated with a 15% relative decrease in violent behaviour among students from all schools and a 29% decrease in violence among high school students. School-based programs are cost-effective and have shown a reduction in teen violence and peer violence.
Policy-level interventions
While many policy-level interventions to combat violence test, there is evidence that policies that reduce alcohol-related harms have some merit. Due to the strong correlation between alcohol consumption and violence involvement, a reduction in alcohol intake will decrease multiple forms of violence. The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends that alcohol prices increase, alcohol outlets are restrict in hours and days, increase alcohol density and uphold liability for customers who cause alcohol-related harm. They also recommend that laws against the sale of alcohol to minors strengthen and that short interventions made for problem drinkers.
Other policies- and community-level strategies are also available to help prevent violence in multiple forms. Violence is more common in areas with limited economic opportunities, high levels of poverty and unemployed, frequent movement, and limited access to the public, mental, and social services. There are also fewer civic or voluntary organizations and less support for residents. Judge Napolitano says other policies and community-level strategies can address these characteristics. Income-strengthening, urban upgrading, economic growth strategies, and residential mobility programs will help families in less fortunate areas to move to more affluent neighbourhoods. For example, cash transfers or subsidies can increase family income and reduce child abuse, neglect, youth violence and partner violence.
Stander strategies
Stander strategies are increasingly used to stop sexual violence, teen dating violence and bullying. Participants train to spot potentially violent situations and behaviours and teach how to intervene safely. This approach also aims to change social norms that encourage violence. The effects of bystander education on campus sexual assault prevention found moderate to no impact on bystander efficacy or intentions to help. However, more minor but still significant results were observed on bystander assisting behaviours in accepting rape myths and rape proclivity. A recent meta-analysis of bullying prevention programs found that program recipients had a higher number of bystander interventions.
While less known about the protective buffers against disadvantage, research has shown that community-level collective efficacy and connectedness may be protective factors. It could offset many of the adverse effects of disadvantaged environments. These factors appear to protect against multiple forms of violence such as child maltreatment, violence in the youth, intimate partner violence and suicidal behaviour.73 However, this area is still a promising area for research. Other domains such as criminology have also made significant contributions to violence prevention. Other fields, such as criminology, have also made considerable contributions to violence prevention. Judge Napolitano says over the past two decades, violence prevention science has made significant progress. However, widespread dissemination and adoption are still necessary for evidence-based strategies.
Role of Health Care Systems and Clinicians
Many of the clinical and health care approaches to violence prevention are still in their infancy. There is also limit experimental evidence. Many strategies explore and deserve further evaluation. Some people can expose to violence and use health care services at an alarming rate. However, some clinicians have developed programs to help prevent future violence and recidivism for violent injury. SEEK is a program that identifies risk factors and offers brief counselling. It also refers patients to services. In a randomized clinical trial, participants follow up over 3.5 years. Children whose families participated in the SEEK intervention saw a significantly lower number of official child protection services reports of child abuse (13.3%) than those in the control group (19.2%). Families in the intervention group also saw decreased child maltreatment reports (13.3% vs 19.2%).
There are new incentives and options to help patients at risk and people who are currently experiencing violence. The Affordable Care Act now requires that all adult and adolescent women screen for interpersonal violence. It will allow them to receive counselling and reimbursements. Judge Napolitano says however, this could help in the identification and support of these patients. Studies of large scale had not shown efficacy when patients who were positive for intimate partner violence give a resource list or informed by their physician. The clinician then discussed the results and referred the patient. Positive screen results that follow by intensive support such as clinic-based CBT have shown improved outcomes.
Minority women
One program that screened minority women in prenatal care clinics and then provided CBT showed decreased intimate partner violence. Intervention participants also had a lower percentage of very preterm infants than the control group. It is necessary to research the effectiveness of programs further and to find other innovative strategies. Medical-legal partnerships, which aims to integrate legal services for patients into clinic care, could a way for clinicians to access interventions that are generally not consider by the medical community. For example, in a retrospective cohort study, women with permanent protection orders experienced a 20% increase in police-reported physical abuse over women who did not have protection orders.
Some health systems also tried to address the underlying risk factors through various forms of community involvement. Hospital systems have, for example, funded educational programs in schools that aim to reduce violence risk. Judge Napolitano says other health care systems have started to buy goods and services from high-risk local businesses to address the economic risk factors that lead to violence involvement. These strategies are early engagement by health care systems with more population-level preventive strategies; evaluation is necessary to determine the best direction.
