Abstract:This three-part presentation is a response to the recommendation of experts at the WHO meeting in Ottawa (2017) who called for “closer collaboration between the fields of public health and violence prevention”:
I. Brief overview of public health:
a. A field of professional practice, and a systematic way of solving problems; b. Five pillars – epidemiology, biostatistics, environmental health, health policy and behavioral science; and c. Social determinants of health
II. What public health offers crime prevention:
a. Framework for inter-disciplinary approaches to violence prevention; b. Methods of identifying and lowering risk factors and increasing protective factors for violence and crime; c. Research and theory-based road maps for changing behavior and social norms that give rise to violence and crime.
III. Possible scenarios of collaboration between the two fields:
a. Incorporating public health professionals to crime prevention programs; b. Partnering with public health professionals to advance crime prevention policies and growing community-wide coalitions to promote sustainability; and c. Creating dual-degree professionals with training in both public health and crime prevention, to promote long-term systems-level integration of the two fields (modeled after other Master’s in Public Health dual degree programs that are offered to medical and dental students).
Vita:SD Shanti is a multi-disciplinary public health professional working to promote the world-wide diffusion and adoption of research based violence-prevention measures. Her areas of expertise include the translation and dissemination of health information, inter-professional collaboration, and multi-modal strategies for promoting health, preventing violence, and changing harmful social norms. She has experience in the governmental, non-governmental and academic sectors. Her innovations in public health have been supported by UNICEF and various foundations in the United States, England and Switzerland. She received seed funding for her violence and depression prevention work from the Rector of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She is the founder of the NGO Woman-to-Woman International, which is a member of the Violence Prevention Alliance of the World Health Organization. She is currently an associate professor of public health at AT Still University of Health Sciences in Arizona, USA, where she teaches public health to dental students and carries out her public health projects. She holds a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from Northwestern University, a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Vermont, and a Master's degree in Public Health from Harvard University (all in the United States).
