CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A leading researcher on violence, particularly as a public health issue, will speak Tuesday night (April 20) at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
James A. Mercy, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, will speak on “Global Perspectives on Violence Prevention” beginning at 7:30 in Room 407 of the Levis Faculty Center, 919 W. Illinois St., Urbana.
The lecture, free and open to the public, is the 13th Annual Daniel S. Sanders Peace and Social Justice Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the university’s School of Social Work. Sanders was a dean of the school and was known internationally as a leader in efforts to achieve world peace, human right and social justice.
Mercy is the associate director for science of the Division of Violence Prevention at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, part of the CDC. He was a co-editor of the World Health Organization’s “World Report on Violence and Health,” published in 2002.
Mercy has conducted and overseen numerous studies on topics such as youth suicide, family violence, homicide and firearm injuries. He has argued in past articles that violence is a public health problem that can be understood and changed, and that violence-prevention programs are more cost-effective than other policy options, such as incarceration.
