Preventing Youth Violence

"April 8–12 is National Youth Violence Prevention Week. Learn more about how to prevent youth violence with CDC’s resources!

All young people deserve to grow up safely and thrive! The Division of Violence Prevention’s goal is to stop youth violence from happening in the first place and to promote approaches to reduce the immediate and long-term harms. Learn more about how to prevent youth violence with CDC’s resources!

Facts about Youth Violence

Youth violence is a significant public health problem that affects thousands of young people each day.

• Examples include bullying, fighting, threats with weapons, and gang-related violence.
• Every 24 hours, 14 young people are the victims of homicide—this is the third leading cause of death for youth ages 10–24.
• Violence can increase a young person’s risk for depression, smoking, substance use, high-risk sexual behavior, academic difficulties, and suicide.
• Youth violence is an adverse childhood experience (ACE) linked to other forms of violence including child abuse and neglect, teen dating violence, sexual violence, suicide, and adult intimate partner violence.

Youth Violence is Preventable

Community members, youth, and adults who care for youth have important roles in preventing violence, and their actions can contribute to the development of safe and supportive communities where young people can reach their full potential. Preventing youth violence requires addressing risk and protective factors at all levels of a young person’s life—individual, relational, community, and societal levels.

Resources for Prevention

Find ways to support youth violence prevention efforts in your community!

• CDC’s technical package, A Comprehensive Technical Package for the Prevention of Youth Violence and Associated Risk Behaviors, Cdc-pdf[4.9 MB] features strategies and approaches based on the best available evidence to help states and communities prevent or reduce youth violence. It is also available in Spanish. Cdc-pdf[3.89 MB]
• Violence Prevention in Practice focuses on taking action to select and implement the strategies in the youth violence technical package linked above. The resource is designed to support state and local health departments and other stakeholders who have a role in planning, implementing, and evaluating violence prevention efforts.
• Learn more about how CDC is addressing youth violence through the Youth Violence Prevention Centers (YVPCs).Through local partnerships, the YVPCs develop, implement, and rigorously evaluate innovative strategies to prevent violence and create safer, healthier family and community environments for youth..."
  Youth violence

Youth Risk Behavior

"CDC releases new data on health behaviors and experiences among high school students. Learn more about the role of schools, communities and families in helping youth establish lifelong healthy behaviors.

The adolescent years are an ideal time to develop healthy behaviors. In the United States, schools play a central role in promoting the health and safety of young people. Each day, the nation’s schools provide an opportunity for roughly 56 million students to learn about the dangers of unhealthy behaviors and practice skills to help establish lifelong healthy behaviors. Both risk and protective behaviors are often established during childhood and persist into adult­hood.

YRBS Results and 10-Year Trends

CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) monitors priority health behaviors and experiences among high school students across the country. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) results help in understanding the factors that contribute to the leading causes of illness, death and disability among youth and young adults.

The YRBS Data Summary and Trends Report uses YRBS data to focus on four priority areas closely linked to HIV and STD risk including sexual behavior, high-risk substance use, violence victimization, and mental health over the past decade..."
Youth risks

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance --- United States, 2007
"In the United States, 72% of all deaths among persons aged 10--24 years result from four causes: motor-vehicle crashes, other unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide. Results from the 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) indicated that many high school students engaged in behaviors that increased their likelihood of death from these four causes. Among high school students nationwide during 2007, 11.1% had never or rarely worn a seat belt when riding in a car driven by someone else. During the 30 days before the survey, 29.1% of high school students had ridden in a car or other vehicle driven by someone who had been drinking alcohol, 18.0% had carried a weapon, and 5.5% had not gone to school because they felt they would be unsafe at school or on their way to or from school. During the 12 months before the survey, 6.9% of high school students had attempted suicide..."