Violence is one of the major causes of death and injury for children, adolescents, and young adults 10 to 25 years of age. This study will examine the effectiveness of a violence prevention program in pediatricians’ offices. The program is designed for families who bring their 2 to 11 year old children in for a well child exam. It focuses on helping parents change behaviors related to the development of violent behavior in 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 Center for Child Health Research, is a national network of practice-based clinicians experienced in research participation. PROS membership consists of more than 500 practices and 1500 clinicians across the country.

This study is being conducted in primary care pediatric clinics across the country that participate in the PROS network. If primary care pediatric clinics are interested in participating in this study, they should contact PROS Central at the number listed under Study Contacts.

PROS practices will be randomly assigned to either Group 1 (violence prevention intervention) or Group 2 (literacy promotion effort). The study will include a total of 110 clinics across the country, 220 practitioners, and 6,600 patients ages 2 to 11 years old. Group 1 providers will receive a community violence prevention resource worksheet to help them identify community specific assets. Patient families (parent/legal guardian) will receive tools to help them adhere to provider recommendations. Providers will be 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 will be examined prior to the well child exam and at 1 and 6 months after the well child exam. Data are collected in the waiting room; the data forms take about 10 minutes to complete. Follow-up telephone interviews are conducted at 1 and 6 months and take up to 10 minutes to complete.

Ages Eligible for Study:  18 Years and above,  Genders Eligible for Study:  Both

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Parent or legal guardian seen in pediatrician's office for well child exam for their 2 to 11 year old children
• Parent/guardian is with the child the majority of time when the child is at home
• English or Spanish speaking
• Anticipate being at the same phone number for 6 to 12 months