Note
This article is related directly to the recent Law Enforcement Public Health (LEPH) Conference in Toronto, Canada, October 2018.
Summary
"Organized public health is concerned with prevention and effective responses to health threats at the population, as opposed to the individual, level. It has a long and successful history of countering health threats globally, mobilizing multiple professions and sectors—but not, until recently, including the law enforcement sector. This began to change with the recognition of violence, previously solely the province of criminal justice, as a public health issue. The Report of the U.S. Surgeon General in 1979, Healthy People, highlighted control of violent behaviour as a major threat to the health of the American people (US Public Health Service, 1979). A Surgeon General’s Workshop on Violence and Public Health in 1985 focused attention on the public health importance of violence and in 1996 the World Health Assembly resolved that “violence is a leading worldwide public health problem,” (World Health Assembly, 49, 1996), and the World Health Organization first declared violence to be an urgent matter of the global public health, including violence and victimization associated with crime (Krug, Mercy, Dahlberg & Zai, 2002). This led to the first solid steps to synergize efforts and interests between public health and law enforcement, steps which were increasingly mirrored in relation to other critical public health issues."--Page 1.