Harvard University Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center
Harvard University
David Hemmenway, PhD – Principal Investigator
Harvard School of Public Health
Health Policy and Management
677 Huntington Ave., Kresge 309
Boston MA 02115
Hemenway@hsph.harvard.edu
Center
website
The Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center (HYVPC) works collaboratively to build community capacity to prevent youth violence in Boston. The Center’s community partners include grassroot organizations such as Teens Against Gang Violence, Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, South Boston Community Health Center; and the relevant Boston public institutions, including Boston Mayor's Office, Boston Public Schools, Boston Police Department, and Boston Centers of Youth and Families.
HYVPC is helping to create a multilayered youth violence surveillance system in Boston that includes a biennial survey of public and private high school and middle-school students and of community adults; it will also include emergency department data on all violent injuries sustained by youth from local hospitals. Data from the surveillance system will be used to determine individual and community risk and resiliency factors for youth violence; track the changing needs of Boston's youth and communities; help develop evidence-based prevention programs; and to evaluate the impact of city and
community policies.
HYVPC has assembled a multidisciplinary academic faculty with expertise in both community collaborations and youth violence prevention. Academic research helps expand the frontiers of knowledge on youth violence prevention. HYVPC training (e.g., five public health school courses, mentoring doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows) helps build the scientific infrastructure. HYVPC hastens the translation of knowledge into community practice in multiple ways: training Boston street workers; teaching community partners about evaluation and asset mapping; and helping pediatricians provide useful counsel
to patients. A Center goal is to become a national model for productive community-academic collaboration, based on the principles of longevity, mutuality and accountability.
Content Source: National Center for Injury Prevention
and Control, Division of Unintentional Injury
Page last modified:
May 16, 2007