Child abuse in terms of a public health model

A public health model for child abuse has been developed to assist in investigating and understanding the multiple factors in causation of the problem and in designing appropriate intervention strategies. The parents responsible for abuse of the child are viewed as the host, the physical and social setting in which the abuse occurred as the environment, and the child is seen as the agent. The vector is conceptualized as influences affecting relations between host and agent. Intervention strategies relate to identification of high-risk parents, high-risk environments and high-risk children, as well as development of non-specific approaches applicable to all three.