Research to Policy Talks

Children and Violence: Catherine Panter-Brick gave a talk at the Yale Alumni Association of the Northwest (YAANW) to showcase how current Yale partnerships are promoting innovations in science and policy.

The talk (Minneapolis, July 2014), described a global initiative to prevent violence and address multiple childhood adversities. Effective parenting is key – in settings as diverse as Afghanistan, Lebanon, Brazil, and Turkey. The global evidence, however, shows that the bulk of parenting interventions is heavily gender-biased, sidelining the importance of men in their role as fathers: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12280/abstract.

The policy discourse needs reframing: the ‘Father Factor’ – making the most of men to improve the community of care for children - is all too often forgotten.

Engaging men is essential to leverage improvements in child development and reduce violence in children’s lives. One good example of how to redefine the masculinity of young men to turn around situations of violence is found in Brazil: click HERE. (This clip is based on a longer report posted on http://www.men-care.org/Blog/Default.aspx?id=66.).

Putting families at the heart of efforts to boost health and to sustain peace is the goal of the Early Childhood Peace Consortium, launched at the United Nations Headquarters last September in New York. How can parenting programs make a difference in conflict settings, moving communities from a disposition of violence to a disposition to peace? This will be the discussion we bring to New York on September 9th (2014), at a meeting scheduled during the UN General Assembly Plenary Session on the Culture of Peace. At Yale, this initiative is led by Pia Britto, Jim Leckman, Catherine Panter-Brick, Kyle Pruett, and Rima Salah within the faculty of Social Sciences and the Child Study Center.