Prevention of Violent Behavior Among Children

More children die violence-related deaths each year than from all natural causes combined. In 2002, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 1.6 million people worldwide died from violence in the year 2000; half of these deaths were due to suicides, one-third were due to homicides, and only one-fifth were war related. The United States continues to have the highest number of violence-related deaths of all developed countries.

The WHO has reviewed the effectiveness of worldwide intervention strategies and made recommendations to promote violence prevention throughout the world. Some of the common themes across all countries included: 1) because families play a fundamental role in influencing the propensity for violent behavior, efforts to provide parents with information and strategies for raising nonviolent children are needed; and 2) early interventions to reduce childhood exposure to violence are essential.

In this study, Wake Forest University Health Sciences (WFUHS) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) will collaborate to evaluate the effectiveness of a pediatric clinician's intervention that has been extensively pilot tested. Pediatric Research in Office Settings (PROS), a program of the AAP, is a national network of practice-based clinicians experienced in research participation. PROS membership consists of more than 697 practices and 1674 clinicians across the country (in 60 AAP Chapters).

This study is being conducted in primary care pediatric clinics across the country that participate in the PROS network.

PROS practices were randomly assigned to either Group 1 (violence prevention intervention) or Group 2 (literacy promotion effort). The study included a total of 137 clinics across the country, 242 practitioners, and 4,890 patients ages 2 to 11 years old. Group 1 providers received a community violence prevention resource worksheet to help them identify community specific assets. Patient families (parent/legal guardian) received tools to help them adhere to provider recommendations. Providers were trained to apply brief techniques of motivational interviewing to help ascertain patient-centered motivation to change violence-related behaviors. Patient families' knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behaviors were examined prior to the well child exam and at 1 and 6 months after the well child exam. Baseline data were collected in the waiting room; the data forms took 10 minutes to complete. Follow-up telephone interviews were conducted at 1 and 6 months and took 10 minutes to complete.