The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Violence Prevention Centers: Paving the Way to Prevention

Excerpt

When you think about violence in the United States in recent years, it is clear that we have been transfixed by a seemingly unending series of tragedies associated with mass shootings. While those events deserve our utmost attention, what has been largely ignored is the fact that we lose an average of 12 youth 10–24 years of age to homicide each day in this country [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2014]. In effect, every day in the United States we lose more young people to “unrelated” homicides than occur in a typical mass shooting. The health burden of these “unrelated” homicides and associated nonfatal violence dwarfs that of the mass shootings of which we, as a society, have been so acutely aware. All the while, in the dark, the broader and much larger problem of youth violence continues, largely unacknowledged and unaddressed. However, despite the relative obscurity this issue has faced, great progress is being made in understanding how communities can work together to prevent it. …