Prevention of family violence

Physicians must learn to recognize the victims of family violence among their patients and must then work to prevent such abuse. To help provide information that can help physicians understand and prevent family violence, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is involved in gathering data that will enable scientists (1) to see the patterns of family violence, (2) to determine the risk factors, and (3) to evaluate interventions to prevent future violence. Then the task will be (4) to establish programs of prevention on a successful scale. The author describes several specific CDC programs designed to meet these four goals, with the ultimate goal being the drastic lowering of incidences of family violence. Medical schools can help reach that goal by using the knowledge gained by such research for curriculum development to train physicians to treat and prevent family violence.