Deborah B. Prothrow-Stith, a nationally recognized public health leader and professor and dean at the Harvard School of Public Health, shared her vision for adolescent violence prevention during the 2001 Wittenberg Series Fred R. Leventhal Family Endowed Lecture, Nov. 14.

The first woman and youngest Commissioner of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Prothrow-Stith has called on communities and policymakers to redirect their attention to address the larger environment that fosters violence.

“If we miss the toxic environment, we’re really missing the central tragedy,” she said. “Our public policies and practices wait until there is a crisis.”

As a chief spokesperson for a national movement to prevent violence, Prothrow-Stith developed and wrote the first violence prevention curriculum for schools and communities, and she co-wrote Deadly Consequences, the first book to present a public health perspective on violence to a mass audience.

In 1993, she was awarded the World Health Day Award. Two years later, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the National Commission on Crime Control and Prevention.

In her address, Prothrow-Stith noted that homicide has become an epidemic, but that it can be prevented if people work ogether in a community. The effort must extend beyond one person or one organization, she said, and it needs to include a critical mass of people who believe that violence is preventable.

“The challenge we have is to build healthy communities around all the children,” she said. This involves an understanding of the risk factors, including poverty, guns, alcohol and drug abuse, witnessing or being a victim of violence in early childhood and an awareness of “our Rambo heads and Terminator hearts.”

It also includes adding non-violent conflict resolution to school curriculums, counseling, public funding for after-school programs to keep children off the streets and a resurgence of the characteristics needed to get along such as kindness and forgiveness.

“One way or another our children will get our time, money, attention and resources,” Prothrow-Stith said, “but we need to decide whether it will be in a preventive or reactive way.”

Prothrow-Stith received her bachelor of arts in mathematics from Spelman College and her M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

The Fred R. Leventhal Family Endowed Lecture was made possible by a gift to Wittenberg University from the Fred R. Leventhal Family of Springfield, Ohio.