CDC Tries to Fight Youth Violence With Science : Crime: The agency hopes to learn what makes a youth grab a weapon at the first sign of conflict, and how to stop the cycle. The gun lobby, and fellow researchers, remain skeptical.
Most doctors only treat victims of the violence that has become epidemic among America’s youth. Mark Rosenberg is trying to prevent the bloodshed.
He’s leading a new public health battle by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--a radical effort to control youth violence that’s drawing criticism from other scientists and the gun lobby.
“Kids are killing kids and we think it’s a fact of life in this country,” said Rosenberg, the CDC’s top expert on violence. “But people thought smallpox was a fact of life too, and it’s been eradicated from the face of the Earth.”
But how do doctors stop a teen-age shootout that killed a 13-year-old passerby as she walked home from an Atlanta library? Or keep a 17-year-old in Kentucky from taking his class hostage and killing a teacher and janitor? Or prevent a 13-year-old boy in Pennsylvania from shooting himself because an official spotted the gun he brought to class?
That’s what the CDC is spending more than $6 million to learn--what puts children at risk and how to lessen the chance they’ll grab a weapon at the first sign of conflict.
“There are things people can do to stop violence,” Rosenberg said. “We’re going to discover them, on the basis of science and not politics.”
The toll from youth violence is staggering:
* About 10,000 Americans ages 10 to 24 are murdered or kill themselves every year.
* More than half the people arrested for murder in 1991 were under 25. One in 20 youths has taken a weapon to school.
* It’s not just an urban problem. The homicide rate for children ages 10 to 14 in New Mexico is the nation’s highest.
Some scientists say that although the CDC successfully fights disease, it isn’t equipped to attack a social problem.
“If by the disease model you try to isolate the violence and treat the violence, like they isolate a germ and treat a germ, they will fail,” said Dr. Ronald Walters of Howard University.
“Violence is a byproduct of the social conditions. . . . They have to treat the cause.”
The National Rifle Assn. says the CDC is just trying to push a handgun ban.
Much of CDC’s focus is on guns, because its studies have found that simple access to one can make a disagreement end in death.
Rosenberg acknowledges he can’t fight such problems as poverty. But he wants to know if teaching children nonviolent social skills from age 3 could make a difference when they’re grown. Or if mentors could counter daily images of violence. Or if mothers’ support groups could lessen the chance of child abuse that in turn leads to violent children.
The CDC has begun by funding three five-year programs in search of a national model to help save some of these children.
In New York City’s Brooklyn borough, seventh- and eighth-graders and their parents will be taught conflict-resolution skills.
“These kids have been exposed to a tremendous amount of violence,” said Ellen Brickman, director of Victim Services in New York. “They must learn alternatives, and those alternatives must be reinforced at home.”
A program in Houston focuses on peer pressure; one in Durham, N.C., provides mentors for impoverished teen-age boys.
