World Health Organization's TEACH-VIP: contributing to capacity building for youth violence prevention

Youth violence is a major public health problem in every region of the world, yet it is especially prevalent in specific settings. Youth homicide rates exceeding 10.0/100,000 occur most often in countries that are low or middle income, or which are experiencing rapid economic or social change. Particularly in low- and middle-income countries, the capacity to develop and implement the comprehensive, multisectoral strategies to prevent youth violence is only just emerging. The prevention of youth violence requires multidisciplinary approaches and a variety of trained professionals. A public health approach to training in the area of injury prevention focuses on providing professionals and paraprofessionals a common understanding of essential skills and knowledge. One important benefit of this is that it addresses a major gap in current public health training that until recently has devoted relatively little attention to injury prevention. Another benefit is that it allows professionals from a variety of backgrounds to work together more effectively to reduce injury. This article will provide a broad overview of youth violence in low- and middle-income countries and will discuss the existing level of capacity within healthcare and public health sectors for responding to these problems. It concludes with a discussion of next steps for increasing capacity and a profile of the World Health Organization (WHO) training curriculum on injury and violence prevention called TEACH-VIP, an acronym for Training, Education, and Advancing Collaboration in Health on Violence and Injury Prevention, as one important effort undertaken by WHO and global injury partners to build capacity.