The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides a number of resources relevant to school crime and violence in its Youth Violence section. Each year, CDC contributes data to the Department of Education’s Indicators of School Crime and Safety. In addition, CDC has collaborated with the Departments of Education and Justice since 1992 to monitor school-associated violent deaths. This agency also sponsors the School Health Policies and Programs Study, which is billed as the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. Every two years, CDC administers the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System, which measures violent behavior, weapon carrying, dating behavior, sexual violence, and suicide among both private and public school students.
In addition to the studies that CDC directly oversees, the organization funds other entities that conduct research relevant to youth and school violence. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducts the Bullying and Sexual Violence Project. CDC also funds the Student Health and Safety Survey, and has helped create a tool to assess school environments to see how school designs contribute to fear and violence.
In regard to prevention, CDC funds 10 Academic Centers of Excellence (ACE) on youth violence. Blueprints for Violence Prevention, which has identified 11 model prevention programs, has also received CDC funding. CDC has publicized Best Practices of Youth Violence Prevention: A Sourcebook for Community Action and is currently collaborating with four universities on a multisite violence prevention project. The agency has developed a school health assessment tool, the School Health Index (SHI), that assists schools in identifying their strengths and weaknesses and developing action plans to increase student health.
CDC’s website offers information about school violence, including an “Understanding School Violence” fact sheet, data on risk and protective factors, evaluation studies, prevention resources, and additional links.
CDC’s Healthy Youth division offers information, resources, and tools relevant to school health and risky behavior on its website. The Violence Prevention division addresses school violence as well as the related issues of child maltreatment, intimate-partner violence, sexual violence, suicide, and more. Featured projects include Choose Respect, about developing healthy dating relationships, and the Rape Prevention and Education (RPE) program, among others. CDC has also produced television programming, including Break the Silence: Stop the Violence.
Browse School Violence Research Topics or other Criminal Justice Research Topics.
References:
- Centers for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/
- Healthy Youth Division: http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/