While it is good news that the problem of bullying is getting more attention, a team of researchers in western Pennsylvania noticed that often, the focus on the subject is hardly scientific.
“It was very much becoming a media- and Hollywood-driven message that we were delivering to the public,” said Matthew Masiello, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Windber Research Institute. “We were concerned that bullying prevention was not being approached in an evidence-based manner.”
But evidence-based programs for bullying prevention that require monitoring and evaluation do exist. Masiello, an APHA member, and Diana Schroeder, MSN, RN, had been working on bullying prevention efforts with help from the Highmark Foundation that have expanded to include more than 400 schools and 200,000 students over 15 years. They are the co-editors of a new book from APHA Press, “A Public Health Approach to Bullying Prevention,” which discusses the practical elements of creating and building bullying prevention programs.
“We’re really very pleased with how our project in a small corner of Pennsylvania has gone,” Schroeder said. “We’ve learned a lot.”
The book, which is expected to be available in late July, is intended for a wide audience that includes teachers, principals, administrators, pediatricians, legislators and academics.
Its 15 chapters cover topics such as defining what constitutes a public health approach to bullying prevention to social and mental health consequences of bullying to best practices in prevention. It also touches on how to engage parents and communities and a cost-benefit analysis of prevention efforts.
A new APHA book seeks to help teachers, administrators and others stop bullying.
Photo courtesy Lisa Young, iStockphoto
Much of the focus of many mainstream news stories about bullying has to do with its relation to suicides and school violence. Masiello noted that more than 70 percent of school-based shootings have been associated with bullying.
But there are numerous other societal consequences to bullying, as well, the authors note. Children become ill and go to the doctor or the emergency room because of bullying. Children often leave school because of bullying, which costs the school money and has a ripple effect on a child’s future.
“If we are able to develop a broad-based bullying prevention program, we have the potential ability to impact health care and education in this country, as well as society in general,” Masiello told The Nation’s Health.
The authors of each chapter, who include experts in the field, base their work on the work of research psychologist Dan Olweus, PhD, whose bullying prevention programs are frequently used in Europe.
But Schroeder said American schools differ from those in Europe in important ways, and so the book offers a framework schools can use as well as additional tools and techniques that can be adapted as needed.
“We’re very outcomes driven in the U.S.,” Schroeder told The Nation’s Health. “We have to be able to monitor and evaluate and make adjustments over time to keep the program doing the positive things it’s trying to do.”
For more information or to order a copy of the book, visit www.aphabookstore.org.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
