VCU to sponsor Youth-Violence Prevention Forum

By Mary Beth Alford

RICHMOND, Va. – In response to the numerous cases of youth violence reported around the nation, Virginia Commonwealth University will bring together families, educators, mental-health professionals and community and youth leaders to discuss how they can work together to curb the growing problem.

Presented by the VCU Department of Psychiatry’s Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and the Virginia Treatment Center for Children, the 39th annual Child Psychiatry Spring Forum, to be held from 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. on May 11, will focus on "Exploring Partnerships for Peaceful Communities: Enhancing Positive Youth Choices and Breaking the Cycle of Violence."

The daylong program will present successful violence-prevention programs, along with ideas for forming partnerships between communities and universities. The forum will highlight the new VCU Center on Youth Violence Prevention, which was recently funded with $1.2 million from the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The forum will be an excellent opportunity for two-way communication between the community and VCU; working together we can find solutions to reduce youth violence in our community and increase positive youth choices," said Janet W. Hill, assistant professor of psychiatry at VCU. "We, as faculty at VCU have been encouraged to reach out and partner with our community to find solutions. This can only be accomplished if the entire community is accountable and works together."

Among the local, state and national programs to be featured are two Richmond-based initiatives recognized as "Promising Programs" by the United States Department of Education.

The are "Al’s Pals: Kids Making Positive Choices" and "RIPP, Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways," sponsored by VCU. Information also will be presented on "Cops and Docs" and "Child VIP," two violence prevention collaborations between the City of Richmond and VCU Health System’s MCV Hospitals.

Two nationally recognized youth violence prevention experts will speak at the forum. Public health psychiatrist Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University and the American Institute of Research, who helped establish the discipline known as prevention science through his research in Chicago’s South Side, will speak at 9:30 a.m. Kellam, who founded the Johns Hopkins Prevention Research Center in Baltimore, is working to develop a new center for integrating education and prevention research in schools.

Emilie Phillips Smith, Ph.D., a senior fellow at the CDC’s Prevention Development and Evaluation Branch in the Division of Violence Prevention will speak at 10:45 a.m. With a focus on preventive approaches within communities of color, Smith has written about home-school-community collaborations involving children and adolescents, especially in the area of violence and delinquency.

The forum will include performances by the Richmond Girls’ Choir and "Drums, No Guns!," a national youth movement for the prevention of handgun violence. Students from Open High School in Richmond’s Oregon Hill neighborhood will perform with "Drums, No Guns!"

This year’s forum is co-sponsored by the VCU Department of Psychiatry’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Commonwealth Institute for Child and Family Studies, the Virginia

Treatment Center for Children and the VCU Center on Prevention of Youth Violence.

The program will be held at the VCU Student Commons, 907 Floyd Ave. Registration for the event is $45, which includes lunch and parking. For more information or to register, contact Eunice Seaborn at (804) 828-4393 or at CICFS@vcu.org.