Image: CDC
The Centers for Disease Control want to know. Specifically, they are inviting people and organizations to participate in a video contest with cash (!) prizes. OK, you won’t be able to retire if you win, but still, it’s nice that they are offering something.
In commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (Injury Center), we are hosting this video contest to answer the question, “What does Injury and Violence Prevention Look Like in My Community?”
The “Seeing My World through a Safer Lens” video contest asks injury and violence professionals, students, and the general public to create a short video that shows injury and violence prevention in their neighborhood, community, state, or region.
You can pick any of the following topic areas to show what injury and violence prevention looks like in your own community.
Can I just point out that lumping injury and violence prevention into the same contest seems a little odd? By “injury” don’t they seem to be implying “accidental injury”? ‘Cause, dude, I think about kids, car seats, and crime all in the same breath. Totally. I know they can go together, but, on the whole, I find the continued medicalization of crime to be a little tiresome.
Image: CDC
Sure, crime can, and does, cause physical injuries that require medical attention. But thinking of crime as a disease, with injury as a symptom, is, like, sooooo 20th Century Rehabilitative Ideal. Could we please move on to the 21st century? Please?
Nevertheless, let’s indulge the CDC. What does injury and violence prevention look like to me? First and foremost, it looks like education and prevention efforts aimed at teaching young people about healthy relationships. And then it looks like teaching males about how not to be violent. After that, it’s probably about teaching judges about why they should grant orders of protection to sexual assault, stalking, and domestic violence victims, and educating family court personnel why they shouldn’t grant joint custody to men who “only used to” abuse the mothers of their children.
I’d make a video, but hey, I don’t see a lot of that in my community.
But if you’ve got something shakin’ in yours, find the contest details here, and enter by July 31, 2012.
Peace out.
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miaquinn
May 18, 2012
I wish I could do something for DV but obviously I can’t be in the video for my own safety.
CrimeDime
May 18, 2012
Maybe there’s a way to make a video that doesn’t identify you personally?
Nessa's Notions
May 22, 2012
There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of preventing injury and violence in my community as there have been 3 murders and numerous shootings all around me for the past few years. I suffer from PTSD. Others are maimed externally as well as internally. We are the walking wounded here, still involved in the war. Often, it feels like Syria here.
Guess this means I can’t participate.
Barbara Roberts
May 25, 2012
Violence prevention, for me, is mostly about helping the victims feel empowered to see thru the fog and leave abusive relationships if they so choose/if they are able to do so. Oh, and trying to wake the Christian church up to the evil domestic abusers who hide out in their midst, and are accepted as fellow Christians. And I help write the blog http://cryingoutforjustice.wordpress.com, which we hope is a light in a very dark place for Christians who are trying to deal with domestic abuse.
But you can’t really take a video of a blog, can you? You can’t even get the readers and contributors to the blog to all come together for a photo shoot. Apart from their fear of identifying themselves because their abusers are still taking pot shots at them, they don’t have the money or time to get together – they’re too busy caring for kids, fighting the family court, trying to put bread on the table, looking for paid work, and trying to untangle the mess from their PTSD. Making videos? You gotta be kidding. Not possible, given the triage-mentality with which they have to face each day.