UNITY Responds to Virginia Tech Shootings

UNITY - Urban Networks to increase Thriving Youth Through Violence Prevention - is a cooperative agreement with CDC co-chaired bv Prevention Institute, Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Billie Weiss from the UCLA Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center.

We would like to express our deepest sympathy to those directly impacted by the tragic violence at Virginia Tech this week. We are shocked but unfortunately not surprised that violence has again befallen us. We can no longer be surprised because violence occurs again and again, and yet as a nation we do so little to prevent it. Certainly the extent of this attack, its location, and its targets are atypical and horrific. Yet it is part of a repeating pattern that we can and must interrupt. Sadly, an average of 45 people are murdered in America every day and many more are injured or traumatized. We cannot accept this as inevitable; we need a renewed commitment to preventing violence. It is clear that, alone, no level of policing or suppression can prevent tragedies such as these.     

As a nation we must ask many questions – here are just a few:

• Why are we failing to take preventive measures? We know so much of what it takes to prevent violence -- training providers to recognize and address risk factors, providing educational and leadership opportunities for youth, economic development in communities, community coalitions building assets, and more - and we can do better than we are doing.

Many of us have the ability to make choices about where we live, work, and shop to try to stay safe away from violence. But the Virginia Tech incident, like others, has shown us that violence is everywhere, and we all have a stake in preventing it. We must finally put attention and resources to this problem, including learning more about what would be most effective in preventing it. Let’s not allow the young victims at Virginia Tech to lose their lives in vain. We need to translate this tragedy into a national demand and political will to say, “No more!” We must stand up and put a stop to the violence. It is time to invest in the quality of our lives and our children’s lives instead of mourning again and again as though nothing could be done. We cannot end all the tragic violence, but we can diminish it. Since we know many of the preventive steps, it is time to take them.

UNITY

UNITY is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The contents of this memo are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the US Department of Health and Human Services. UNITY is funded in part by a grant from The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF).  Created in 1992 as an independent, private foundation, TCWF’s mission is to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education and disease prevention.

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