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What Legislators Can Do to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence
- Fully fund well researched prevention and early intervention programs that enhance relationship health.
- Support legislation that treats dating violence among teens as a specific criminal violation, and support school policy that creates zero-tolerance for relationship violence.
- Support the inclusion of violence prevention and reduction criteria in the education and training of teachers, administrators, and school staff.
- Support access to and availability of after-school programs to create safe places for elementary and secondary school children.
- Ban the use of corporal punishment in schools, juvenile facilities, child care facilities, and all other institutions where children are cared for and educated.
- Encourage collaboration and coordination among community partners, including education, mental health, social services, the faith community, and juvenile justice agencies.
- Support comprehensive and coordinated school-based services that support the prevention of relationship violence and assist youth that experience violence.
- Enact legislation mandating parity for coverage of comprehensive mental health care services.
- Ensure access to and availability of long-term programs in prevention, education, screening, and treatment of violent behaviors, and for alcohol and other drug abuse.
- Support improved access to and availability of community mental health care services, including education, screening, and early intervention for victims, perpetrators, and witnesses of violence.
- Enact meaningful gun control legislation designed to limit children’s access to firearms.
- Support public education on media influences on violence.
- Establish a comprehensive national, state, and local data collection and surveillance system for tracking intentional and unintentional injuries. Support data collection of intimate partner violence prevalence among youth and adults.
- Urge congressional support for a national relationship violence prevention campaign involving all media.
- Urge federal support for intimate partner violence prevention research, education, and programming.
Excerpted from the Commission for the Prevention of Youth Violence. Youth and Violence: Medicine, Nursing and Public Health: Connecting the Dots to Prevent Violence. Chicago, IL : American Medical Association; 200:28.
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