Violence Prevention & Social Media

Using Facebook, Twitter to Raise Awareness about Violence Prevention

From infants to the elderly, violence affects people in all stages of life and is linked to many chronic diseases, obesity, substance abuse and other physical, reproductive, and mental health consequences. It is also costly. Just the medical and lost productivity costs alone—for firearms injuries, stab wounds, and assaults—exceed $70 billion a year based on a study published by CDC in 2006.

Housed in CDC’s Injury Center, the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) works to prevent violence and its consequences, which includes promoting the importance of prevention. Social media, like Facebook and Twitter, plays an important role in our outreach.

Our fans and followers can keep up with our most recent research, new articles and prevention resources on Facebook and Twitter. Fans also have opportunities to interact with our experts in real time, like they did during our recent Twitter Live Chat about bullying prevention. The event took place during National Youth Violence Prevention Week and featured CDC experts, the Anti-Defamation League, the US Department of Education and the Health Resources and Services Administration. During the live chat, #VetoViolence was one of the top 10 trending topics worldwide!

The VetoViolence Facebook page also hosts our partner spotlight, which features one of our partners working in the field of violence prevention each month. This provides our fans with instant access to other organizations who are also working to help us all live safer, healthier lives.

Fans can also pledge to prevent violence with the interactive VetoViolence Pledge app, which allows them to create a custom badge that will appear on their Facebook profile page. They can also check out a variety of violence prevention podcasts, recorded by experts and CDC and housed directly on the Facebook page.

Help CDC stop violence, before it begins.  We invite you to follow CDC’s Injury Center on Twitter — @CDCInjury — and to join the discussion on Facebook. Together, we can make a difference.