Violence Is Preventable When You Treat It as a Public Health Problem
Glasgow’s turnaround makes the pattern clear: communities that get upstream of violence — addressing the childhood adversity underneath it, not just responding after the fact — see it fall. We’ve already taken a treatment program from research to reality once, in partnership with Rochester’s own justice system and leading trauma and public health researchers. We’re ready to bring that same rigor to preventing ACEs in your community.
Glasgow proved the theory works — at national scale
In the early 2000s, the World Health Organization gave Glasgow, Scotland a grim label: murder capital of Europe. Two decades later, it’s cited internationally as a public safety success story. We didn’t build Glasgow’s program — the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit did. We cite it here because it’s the largest-scale proof we know of that the theory underneath our own work is sound.
National homicides in Scotland, from 2004/05 to recent years.
Drop in Glasgow’s homicide rate since the mid-2000s.
Of sustained, cross-sector investment behind the turnaround — not a two-year pilot.
The same root causes, again and again
In 2005, Scottish police analysts building what became the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit noticed something in their data: most homicides weren’t planned crimes — they were sudden, almost accidental. When they looked upstream, the pattern led back to the same handful of root causes.
the upstream cause this model treats directly
The part most people miss: strip away the policing language, and the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit’s founding insight is ACE-informed prevention in practice — the same root-cause thinking behind adverse childhood experiences research, applied to violence. Glasgow’s turnaround is often told as a policing story. It’s really a prevention story — and prevention is where organizations working on childhood adversity, not police departments, have the deepest expertise.
Violence is preventable, not inevitable
The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit reframed violence as a public health problem — something to be prevented and treated like an epidemic, rather than punished after the fact. In practice, that meant four things working together.
Early Identification
At-risk kids identified through schools and social work, long before any offense occurs.
Emergency-Room Intervention
Treating a violent injury as a moment to connect someone with support — not just stitch them up and send them back to the same circumstances.
Treating Exposure as Contagious
Resources focused on breaking the transmission of violence from one person, and one generation, to the next.
Sustained Cross-Sector Investment
Health, education, police, and social services sharing data and working from the same playbook for close to two decades.
We’ve taken a program from research to delivery — in treatment, not yet in prevention
In Monroe County, New York, we designed and built an evidence-based trauma treatment program for justice-involved adults — tertiary prevention, not the primary prevention this page is about. We haven’t yet built a program at this scale to stop ACEs before they happen. But we’ve proven we can take a program from research to reality, with the credibility to back it and a local partner willing to try it — and that’s exactly the muscle we’d bring to prevention next.
Where it stands: the program is developed and fully documented, and the pilot is ready to launch as soon as funding becomes available. Funding has, so far, been stalled by politics rather than by any flaw in the design. That’s a funding and timing problem, not a proof-of-concept problem, and it’s exactly why we’re looking for the next community, and the next partner, to pick this up.
We’re not starting from theory — we’re starting from experience
Stop Abuse Campaign works at the root of this problem: preventing the adverse childhood experiences that, left unaddressed, cascade into the outcomes places like Glasgow spent twenty years trying to reverse. Here’s what a new partnership would draw on.
A Track Record of Getting From Research to Reality
We’ve taken an evidence-based program from design to delivery before, and built the research relationships to back it — ready to apply that same discipline to a prevention program, not just adapt a treatment one.
Credible Research Partners
Direct relationships with trauma-treatment and public health researchers who can put real academic weight behind a local program.
Hands-On Program Development
Designed and built in direct partnership with Monroe County Sheriff Todd K. Baxter and his office — ready to build that kind of partnership again, with the right community and the right funding.
Let’s Build the Next One Together
If you’re a public health agency, county, CVI program, or policymaker interested in what an ACE-informed prevention program could look like in your community — backed by the same research relationships and program-development experience behind our Monroe County treatment work — let’s start the conversation.