Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith: How School-Based Programs Reduce Instances of Violence

With that perspective, that public health-- primary, secondary, tertiary prevention perspective-- I can understand the value of Facing History in the context of Chicago so torn by so much violence. You can't police your way to prevention. You have got to deal with social norms and attitudes. And school-based programs have been shown to be effective.

In fact, we should have a requirement in this country based on data, based on very good data, to have in every school-- elementary, middle, high, junior high, high, every school, a universal violence prevention program.

And by universal, it is understood that it's for all students, not for the bad students. You don't take the bad students and do violence prevention. In this case, this study shows that all students benefit. And the school benefits from some universal violence prevention program with as much as-- no-- actually, with an average reduction in fighting of 15%. And that is regardless of the socioeconomics of the school.

CDC has done a great-- the Centers for Disease Control has done a great job of doing these kind of meta-analysis and producing this data. And what we have to do-- public policy-- is understand that we, as a society, have a vested interest in school-based education.