Carl C. Bell, M.D. is a Chicago-based psychiatrist, lecturer and author who focuses on mental wellness, violence prevention, and traumatic stress caused by violence. He is the President and CEO of Community Mental Health Council, author of The Sanity of Survival: Reflections on Community Mental Health and Wellness and co-author of Suicide and Homicide among Adolescents. Dr. Bell is also the Acting Director, Institute for Juvenile Research and Professor, Department of Psychiatry and School of Public Health.

Violence Prevention Works: What fuels your passion for the work you do as it relates to violence prevention?

Dr. Bell: When I was in medical school at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN, I was given a very strong public health indoctrination. It was made crystal clear to me that being a physician was an ethical, moral, legal, and socially responsible honor that I should be very serious about. It was also emphasized to me that if a child came into the office with a rat bite and I treated the child by cleaning the wound, dressing the wound and giving the child a tetanus shot I would be a good physician, but if multiple children from the underserved community I was serving came in with rat bites and I stayed in my office treating rat bites instead of going out of my office and "getting rid of the rats" from the community, I should have my medical license revoked. I see the same thing with the issue of violence. If I treat children who have been exposed to violence or who have been victimized from violence that is one level of carrying out my obligations as a physician but if there is a problem of violence in the community, I need to do violence prevention. It is simple - Public Health, Public Health, Public Health.

VPW: What would you deem as your “mission” in violence prevention?

Dr. Bell: My mission is to stem the tide of violence. How I accomplish this mission is the question? And, the way I seek to go about this mission is to first gather the science of violence prevention. Let's face it some common sense things just don't work and some counter intuitive things do work, so we need science to figure the things that work and don't work, so we can use the violence prevention interventions that do work and not waste time and energy on things that do not work. I helped out with Dr. David Satcher's (16th Surgeon General) Youth Violence Report and we learned that Boot Camps and individual psychotherapy does not work for violent youth. When we did the Aban Aya Youth Violence Prevention project we learned what did work and were able to apply it in Chicago Public Schools for a time. Unfortunately, the Chicago Public School Violence Prevention Initiative worked so well the need to continue it was lessened. It was discontinued only to see violence on the rise again.

VPW: Do you have a vision for healthcare as it relates to violence prevention? If so, what is your vision?

Dr. Bell: I am hoping the Nation will take the recommendation contained in the 2009 Institute of Medicine's Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities (http://www.iom.edu/CMS/12552/45572/64120.aspx) and do research on how to adapt, disseminate and implement such evidence-based interventions as Aban Aya until such efforts are as ubiquitous as polio shots or seat belts.

VPW: If there were specific areas within prevention that you would recommend providers focus on and/or study, what would they be?

Dr. Bell: I would strongly suggest that researchers stop developing their own interventions and proving they work but switch focus on how to get the evidence-based interventions that are already developed that show efficacy and research how to put them into practice.