NCJ Number
227598
Journal
THE CRIMINOLOGIST Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Dated: March/April 2000 Pages: 1,4,6
Date Published
March 2000
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article presents an overview of the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC's) involvement in violence prevention and corrections-related activities and an introduction to the types of work being done of relevance to criminologists.
Abstract
There is actually a great deal of health promotion and disease prevention work at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), though the control of disease outbreaks may be the activity most commonly associated with the CDC. However, the CDC does not use an infectious disease model for explaining violence. The public health approach seeks to determine what factors in a person's environment contribute to the likelihood of their either engaging in the target behavior, or being a victim of that behavior, and then developing preventive measures to avoid being at the at-risk category. There is a four-step public health approach: (1) for a given problem, there are ongoing monitoring activities, (2) the risk factors associated with the problem are identified, (3) programs are identified and evaluated using scientific research approaches, and (4) new knowledge, based on the evaluations, is disseminated for others to employ the knowledge. A list, however not exhaustive, of activities is presented serving as an introduction to what is being done and by which CDC center, such as a multi-site, multiple level youth violence prevention project, monitoring and analysis of sexual assault, and a focus on violence and reproductive health. This brief overview orients criminologists to violence prevention and corrections-related activities at the CDC. Research efforts are increasingly demonstrating linkages between public health and public safety in areas such as violence prevention, and the disease burden carried by incarcerated populations. list of Web sites and references