Posts tagged health
CU expert: Preventing school violence is everybody’s job
Feb 29th
University of Colorado expert says
The tragic school shooting that occurred Feb. 27 at a suburban Cleveland high school is another reminder that communities can and must take action to prevent school violence, according to Delbert Elliott, a nationally renowned authority on school safety and juvenile violence at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“A key prevention strategy is good surveillance and good intelligence,” said Elliott, founding director of the CU-Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. “We need to enlist our students, our teachers and our adults in the community to help us and ask them to notify the police or the sheriff if they see something unusual or have heard that something is about to happen.”
In 80 percent of the school shootings examined by the U.S. Secret Service, someone knew the event was going to take place, Elliott said. “Nationally, we know right now of a dozen or more events for which we got a tip and were able to intervene early so the planned event actually never took place, which is, I think, our very, very best security.” Some of these plans were on the same level of violence as the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, he said.
In Colorado, there’s a toll-free Safe2Tell reporting system for students and others to call in anonymous tips about safety concerns, the result of collaboration between the CU-Boulder center and the Colorado Attorney General’s office. All tips are treated seriously, and when combined with other sources of information, often result in some kind of intervention. Since 2004, Safe2Tell has received almost 10,000 calls.
From 2004 through 2010, follow-up data indicate that 83 percent of all Safe2Tell incidents resulted in a positive intervention or action. These tips resulted in 415 formal investigations, 359 counseling referrals, 298 prevention/intervention plans, 324 potential suicide interventions, 312 school disciplinary actions, 74 arrests and 28 prevented school attacks.
“An equally critical key to security is to create a welcoming environment in which all students feel that they’re respected, that the rules are applied uniformly to all students, and students feel safe,” Elliott said. “When students feel that some children can get away with bad behavior and others can’t, and there’s bullying going on, that’s when kids feel like they have to take a weapon to school to protect themselves.”
After Columbine raised awareness of the need to prepare for school crises, school safety has improved nationally, Elliott said. In Colorado, the Legislature changed the law to allow schools, law enforcement and social services agencies to legally share information and every school in the state is now required to have a bullying prevention plan.
Any parent in the state can now go into their child’s school and ask to see what the bullying prevention plan is for that school and make sure that the school is following through with it, he said.
Every school, even those in rural areas, needs an “all-hazards” approach to crises that works for a variety of threats: fires, natural hazards, terrorist attacks, chemical spills, a shooter in the building or a hostage takeover, Elliott said. But most schools haven’t practiced these plans with a full response by police, SWAT, fire, victims’ services, mental health services and ambulances — all coordinated by a single command post.
As the responses to both Columbine and Sept. 11 showed, such drills are important because they reveal communications and other crucial response issues between agencies, he said. Such practices could be held on weekends without students being present, he noted.
Elliott also is concerned when school officials tell him that school safety is a lower priority for them than academic performance, that there is no space in their curriculum for an anti-bullying program.
“These two things should not be in competition with each other,” he said. “If you’ve got a problem with students feeling unsafe at school, you’re not going to improve academic performance because school safety is a necessary precondition for students to be able to concentrate and even to be willing to come to school.
“We argue that being safe at school and improving academic performance go hand in hand.”
Six percent of schoolchildren reported that they had not come to school on occasion because they were afraid of being threatened or assaulted according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control survey, Elliott said.
“Nevertheless, students are more likely to be a victim of violence away from school than at school by a huge margin,” said Elliott, who was the senior scientific editor of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Youth Violence issued in 2001.
The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence is part of the CU-Boulder Institute of Behavioral Science. For more information about the center visithttp://www.colorado.edu/cspv/.
Police investigate Seth Brigham for Criminal Charges related to recent attack on Boulder city council
Nov 11th
“You are the subject member in the investigation because it is your behavior that created probable cause to believe you violated several laws, including city ordinance 5-5-1(a) Obstructing Government Operations; C.R.S. 18-9-108, Disrupting Lawful Assembly; and 18-9-110, Public Buildings – trespass, interference. Our investigation will document what occurred, what violations occurred, and what warnings were provided (letter from City Manager). Any future criminal behavior on your part will likely result in more”than just a warning.”
Brigham has also received a letter from the city manager telling him he was being investigated. Mayor Susan Osborne also wrote to Brigham telling him ” there were consequences”
Brigham has created an email thread over the past week where he included amongst others Boulder Channel 1 and Judd Golden from the ACLU. Golden was a willing recipient in the email thread but singled out chief Beckner here showing his biased aganst Police :According to Judd Golden in a letter Today to Chief Beckner: ”
“Please do not continue to copy the Boulder County ACLU on these messages regarding Seth Brigham.
The ACLU has no information about this incident. We do not represent Mr. Brigham or speak for him. The ACLU takes no position on his conduct which is the subject of this email thread or the law enforcement response thereto. However, as we have repeatedly stated: The ACLU urges Council to make needed changes in the rules of decorum for public participation as has been proposed to Council by the City Attorney.”
Brigham has admittedly suffered from mental health problems, but his recent appearances at Council have him drunk and disorderly according to witness’s.
As a point of disclosure Seth Brigham has been a contributor to Boulder Channel 1 news. This story is about him, not by him.
CU STUDENT’S LIFE PLANS CHANGE AFTER VOLUNTEERING IN RURAL NEPAL
Oct 18th
Taylor Roberts, a University of Colorado at Boulder senior majoring in architectural engineering, is an example of the growing number of CU-Boulder students who are civically engaged.
Roberts is co-president of the CU-Boulder chapter of GlobeMed, a national student organization focused on improving the health of impoverished people. The organization has 19 chapters across the nation that partner with different grassroots groups that work in communities throughout the developing world.
CU-Boulder’s chapter is partnered with Himalayan HealthCare Inc., a nonprofit organization that works to improve health care services, support education and create employment opportunities in villages in rural Nepal.
Before joining GlobeMed, Roberts got his first taste of civic engagement through his involvement in CU-Boulder’s Presidents Leadership Class and Engineers Without Borders.
“Both of these organizations helped push me in the direction of becoming civically engaged at CU-Boulder and becoming active with the GlobeMed organization,” Roberts said.
Roberts traveled to Tipling, Nepal, last summer with the CU-Boulder GlobeMed chapter, where he spent a lot of his time working with Project C.U.R.E.
“Project C.U.R.E. is an organization that donates medical supplies and services,” said Roberts. “They donated $100,000 worth of medical supplies to Tipling.”
The supplies included common surgical instruments, laboratory and diagnostic tools and machines for operating and delivery rooms, according to Roberts.
While in Nepal, Roberts and three other GlobeMed students worked on a community education project, which included teaching a women’s empowerment course and volunteering at two elementary schools. They also built a latrine for the community, a key component of maintaining a clean water supply.
Since returning from his trip to Nepal, Roberts has been focusing not only on graduation, which is quickly approaching next spring, but also on continuing the GlobeMed legacy at CU-Boulder.
“We’ve got our chapter solidified,” said Roberts. “It’s a fairly selective process, but it’s a good opportunity for students to learn about global health issues.”
After graduation, Roberts plans to pursue a professional engineering certificate, a process that will lead to becoming a licensed engineer.
“I want to move into engineering for developing communities,” he said.
Roberts encourages CU-Boulder students to get involved with GlobeMed, especially since the organization works closely with the university to foster a positive environment for civic engagement. His involvement in the group helped change his perspective on the world.
“I’ve traveled around Europe before, but Nepal was life changing,” said Roberts. “I want to spend a lot of time in Nepal and rural communities. That’s the direction I see my life going.”
For more information on GlobeMed, visit http://www.globemed.org/ or e-mail ucboulder@globemed.org.
SOURCE-CU media affairs