Activity

Violence Prevention in Low- and Middle Income Countries: Finding a Place on the Global Agenda

Type:: Stand Alone Workshop
Topics:: Global Health
Boards:: Board on Global Health

Activity Description

Violence occurs everywhere, but disproportionately in low- and middle-income countries (LMCs). The rate of violence-related deaths-of which an estimated 1.6 million occurred in 2001-was more than twice as high in LMCs as in high-income countries. On the order of 90 percent of violent deaths worldwide occur in LMCs. The much greater burden of non-fatal violence is equally skewed toward LMCs, exacerbated in many cases by the inaccessibility of appropriate medical care. The patterns of violence also vary tremendously by region, by country and by area. Following reasoning common to chronic disease epidemiology, this very variation suggests that some large portion of violence should be preventable.

The causes and risk factors, and approaches to prevention and mitigation vary by the nature of the violence. A few major categories have been used to divide the types of violence for policy and programmatic purposes. The broadest categories are self-directed violence, interpersonal violence, and collective violence. On a practical level, the groupings that are generally addressed are:

youth violence
child abuse and neglect
violence by intimate partners
abuse of the elderly
sexual violence
self-directed violence
collective violence

An ad hoc committee organized a 2-day public workshop with invited presentations and discussion to bring together the full range of experts who deal with violence prevention issues in the United States, representatives of the general global health community, and those who are most knowledgeable about violence in low- and middle-Income countries (LMCs). The committee planned the agenda, selected and invited speakers and discussants, and conducted the workshop to: (1) promote information exchange and (2) highlight public health approaches for preventing violence in LMCs with greater technical assistance and resource support from the United States, both public and private sectors. A summary of the workshop was prepared by a rapporteur who was not part of the ad hoc committee.