Public Health Asks of Community Psychology…

As the field of public health has increasingly recognized the social and behavioral aspects of the changing epidemiology of diseases and injuries, it has added social and behavioral scientists to the faculties of schools of public health and most federal and state public health agencies. Community psychology can play a crucial role in helping to bridge the dominant psychological theories with the family and community contexts in which individuals are conditioned and reinforced in their tendencies toward violent behavior. Public health asks of community psychology a helping hand in bridging the clinical endpoints of most NIH-sponsored behavioral research with the community endpoints of most CDC-sponsored programs such as injury control.