Preventing Child Maltreatment: A Public Health Approach

By Caitlin Hunter and Heidi Radunovich, PhD

It is impossible to report an accurate number of confirmed cases of child maltreatment annually because there are no commonalities between definitions, tracking procedures, and handling of child maltreatment cases across the various disciplines that encounter it. Furthermore, there are likely many instances reported as accidents that comprise maltreatment, as well as other unidentified cases. Professionals should not wait for media outlets to report on tragic child deaths or serious injuries resulting from child maltreatment cases, allowing them to paint the picture of a failed system. Instead, professionals need to work to become accountable for failures and have a system in place to prevent future tragedies.

If there is a plane crash, do we stop traveling? If there is a lab explosion, do we stop using science? No. We find the root cause, learn to catch problems before they have disastrous effects, and we fix them early. Shouldn’t it be the same for child maltreatment? A public health approach is best here because the child welfare system only knows about reported cases of child maltreatment. Making this issue a broader public health one will allow a larger population to be reached by prevention services.

The first step in preventing child maltreatment is establishing measurement and classification criteria that are consistent across state, local, and national levels in multiple disciplines, which have previously used different legal and regulatory standards (medicine, law enforcement, child welfare, and the judicial system). Using this new criteria and a public health approach, professionals will be able to engage in surveillance, or defining and monitoring the problem in order to determine prevalence and risk, which will help them begin to formulate a plan to address the issue.

Next, professionals should look to identify both risk and protective factors and combine these with surveillance data to get a better picture of what a good prevention strategy might look like. Identifying high-risk families and the times when risk is highest will help provide professionals with opportunities for early intervention strategies. Instead of the media only reporting on child fatalities or serious injury as a result failure by the child protective services, public information campaigns can be used to prevent child maltreatment. They can also be integral in explaining that child safety is a community responsibility, rather than the responsibility of a single agency, and that all citizens can do their part to help.

In order to create these prevention programs, there must be ongoing collaboration between local, state, and national levels as well as a wide variety of service agencies and community partnerships. Having everyone on the same page is essential for improving outcomes, and the public health approach is the best option to achieve effective results.

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