A book review in this week's BMJ (p 289) reflects on ways of preventing violence. There are many types of violence and countless groups working to stamp out the problem both here and in the United States, which, according to many commentators, is experiencing a violence “epidemic.” One excellent site is www.domesticviolencedata.org—an information coordinating system for domestic violence projects in the United Kingdom. The Home Office also has a dull page of links to other government antiviolence programmes (www.homeoffice.gov.uk/domesticviolence). Further afield, both the Family Violence Prevention fund (fvpf.org) and the Center for Study and Prevention of Violence (www.colorado.edu/cspv) are working to combat violence in the US.
Violence in schools is an increasing problem, particularly in America following the recent fatal school shootings. In the light of this, the Virginia Youth Violence Project (http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/curry/centers/youthvio/) is working to identify effective methods for violence prevention in schools. An interesting, thorough article on this topic can be found at (http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu/monographs/uds107/preventing_contents.html).
Increasing numbers of attacks on staff in the workplace, particularly within the NHS, have received a great deal of media coverage. The NHS has launched a zero tolerance campaign, which has an excellent site at www.nhs.uk/zerotolerance/. The British Association for Accident and Emergency Medicine has produced its own guidelines for staff in A&E departments (www.baem.org.uk/violence.htm). On a wider scale the Health and Safety Executive also provides guidelines for workers (www.hse.gov.uk), while www.workplaceviolence.co.uk provides a forum for sharing ideas on the subject.