Highlights from the Safety 2012 World Conference

The Safety 2012 World Conference was held in Wellington, 1-4 October 2012. This report highlights the keynote addresses, concurrent sessions and workshops and posters which focused on community and family violence during the conference.

At the conference Co-Director Associate Professor Janet Fanslow chaired two sessions on family violence. One session focused on family violence surveillance and interventions from around the world (read abstracts) and a workshop session showcased New Zealand family violence prevention activities including the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, VIP in the health system, the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families and the It’s Not OK Campaign (read abstracts). There were also two concurrent session on community violence  (read abstracts session B and session D).

Family violence and community violence issues featured in the poster presentations too. Read descriptions of the 28 family violence and 21 community violence posters.

The global burden of injury was highlighted by Professor Alan Lopez, Head of the School of Population Health, University of Queensland. Lopez presented the latest results from the Global Burden of Disease and Injuries Study. Read the abstract. The final results will be published shortly in The Lancet.

Two of the keynote speakers focused on violence prevention. Detective Chief Superintendant John Carnochan from the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit said, “If we don’t fix violence against women, we will never fix violence”.Access video of keynote.  Read the abstract.Listen to Carnochan's interview with Kim Hill, Radio NZ, 6 October 2012 

Dr Alexander Butchart, Prevention of Violence Coordinator at WHO’s Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability, explained WHO’s evidence-based approach to violence prevention which has led to the development of an online database of all published violence prevention outcome evaluations, the publication of Violence prevention: the evidence. The paucity of high quality evaluations of family violence interventions was acknowledged. Access video of keynote.   Read the abstract. Click here for Violence Prevention Evidence Database and Resources.

Professor Eric Caine, University of Rochester Medical School presented a thought provoking State of the Art session ‘Suicide prevention: confronting public health challenges’ noting that, “Suicide is preventable! Future initiatives must integrate injury prevention [including family violence prevention] and mental health perspectives, identify common risks and create and sustain a mosaic of coordinated programmes in order to enhance community health and promote mental health and to provide timely access to services across diverse social settings.” Access the video. Read the abstract. 

In ‘Winning hearts and minds’, another State of the Art session, Professor Ian Roberts, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine illustrated the key role storytelling plays in delivering key messages, particularly when dealing with complex data or “how to combine valid research findings and wrap them into simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories that stick”.  Access the video.

Videos of the Keynote speeches are available on the Safety2012 website and abstracts for papers and posters can be found in Injury Prevention, 2012, 18 (suppl. 1).

The NZ Family Violence Clearinghouse was able to showcase its publications and services at the Auckland UniServices stand, where Gay Richards, NZFVC Information Specialist talked to  a number of people with an interest in family violence prevention from New Zealand and around the world.

The next conference - Safety 2014 will be held in Atlanta, GA, 19 - 23 October 2014. Atlanta is the home of the CDC Injury Center.