Defining Violence &
A Public Health Approach
It is important to clearly define violence. The Core Group selected the following, widely accepted, definition from The National Committee for Injury Prevention and Control: Violence is “the use of force with the intent to inflict injury or death upon oneself or another individual or group(s) and includes the threat of force to control another individual or group,” and “aggressive human behavior involving the use of physical, psychological or emotional force with the intent to cause harm to oneself or others.”5

This definition spans multiple fields and encompasses many types of violence including child abuse, battering, youth violence, homicide, assault, hate violence, dating violence, and family violence.

The notion of a public health, or comprehensive, approach to violence arose from the awareness that criminal justice alone could not, and has not, solved the problem. The violence prevention movement is actually broader, both in concept and in participation than public health, but is based on some fundamental public health tenets including:

• primary prevention orientation—efforts designed to prevent violence before it occurs;
• data-driven—approaches based on data that describes the nature of problem as well as contributing risk and resiliency factors;
• collaborative—multiple partners working together to produce change; and
• general population based—seeking community-wide or “environmental” solutions.

Utilizing public health principles promotes broader, more lasting solutions to the violence problem. Such an orientation is essential because “no mass disorder afflicting mankind is ever brought under control or eliminated by attempts at treating the individual.”6 Individual actions, criminal justice deterrents and punishments are inadequate to intervene in a problem that has all of the markings of an epidemic.
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