Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Expert Panel on Protective Factors for Youth Violence Perpetration: Background and Overview

The CDC Expert Panel on Protective Factors for Youth Violence Perpetration was convened to review and advance the status of etiologic and prevention research on direct protective and buffering protective factors for youth violence perpetration. The current paper introduces Phase One of the panel's work, which focuses on direct protective factors and includes the papers in this supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. This paper provides the context for the panel's work, describes its practical and theoretic importance, and summarizes why independently defined direct protective factors and risk factors are important for the advancement of our understanding of youth violence and its prevention. Lastly, this paper briefly describes the organization of the work of the panel as well as the research products that comprise the contents of the supplement.