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Simmons President Susan Scrimshaw Calls Urban Violence a 'preventable public health epidemic' in Boston Globe Op-ed

BOSTON (April 26, 2007) — Simmons President Susan Scrimshaw wrote an op-ed in the April 22 Boston Sunday Globe on the deadly cycle of urban violence. In the editorial "The Violence Virus," Scrimshaw said shootings between young people armed with guns should be approached as a public health epidemic.

"By approaching it as a contagious disease of underlying expectations and pressures, one that is both treatable and preventable, we can make significant progress toward halting it," writes Scrimshaw, an internationally respected public health scholar who has specialized in violence prevention as the former dean of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health.

Scrimshaw recommends utilizing street-smart outreach workers, who may have had troubled pasts but are committed to helping youth in their neighborhoods, to serve as "violence interrupters."

To read the entire op-ed, click here.