Causes and Cures XII: Public Health Approaches

The past several years have been a landmark moment for violence prevention, with renewed attention on the part of many international agencies, but especially the United Nations, with its adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The latter invites the world community to collaborate in an inclusive, long-ranging vision for the future, highlighting our interdependence and collective responsibility for humanity's future. A growing awareness that preventing violence does not just reduce death and disability but promotes creativity, economic growth, and general well-being is at the heart of this “movement”. An integration not only of the major disciplines but of various practical approaches is timely, and for this to occur, we require a broader overview of our existing societal structures. In this context, this fifteen article series modeled after a Global Health Studies course entitled, “Violence: Causes and Cures,” reviews the mechanisms that society has used in an attempt to stem violence. The next two articles will briefly cover how, over the past few decades, health sectors have been instrumental in shifting the view of human violence from being a law and order issue to a preventable health problem. Public health paved the way for interdisciplinary research and multisectoral collaboration, providing a critical link between research and implementation. Demonstrating that violence prevention is possible, not as an article of faith but based on evidence, is perhaps one of the greatest achievements in humanity's effort to deal with its own violence.