Community Based Youth Injury Prevention Program

Study Summary

America's greatest resource is its youth, but that resource is increasingly threatened by violence. Recommendations for violence prevention have highlighted the need to focus on youth and to explore targeted interventions Nowhere is the need greater than in our nation's capital where the intentional injury fatality rate for youth age 14-19 is higher than any of the 50 states. This study builds on the CDC-supported project Adolescent Violence: A Community-Based Strategy which instituted citywide surveillance on injuries, conducted by researchers at the Children's National Medical Center. In this study, the same researchers will extend that work by testing an individualized intervention to reduce violent behavior among a sample of assault-injured youth, age 9-15, who present at the Emergency department (ED). 196 youths and their families will be included in this randomized trial, with 98 families assigned to the individualized intervention condition and 98 families assigned to the control condition. Families will be followed for 18 months. To address issues of attrition over the 18 months that the study follows, approximately twice as many families, or 400 families, will be recruited to participate in the study.