King's College London

In the twenty-first century, the public health model is increasingly taking centre-stage in global responses to violence. Based on impressive claims of success, interventions such as Cure Violence (CV) – originally a Chicago-based programme that treats violence as a disease – are being adopted and adapted in communities around the world. The World Bank unequivocally describes the public health approach as the most effective form of violence intervention, and the World Health Organisation has placed it at the centre of its global strategy for violence-prevention (World Bank, 2016; WHO, 2002). As public health practitioners lead the way in providing an alternative to criminal-justice-centred responses to violence, this issue highlights the importance of maintaining flexibility in the way that the drivers of violence are conceptualised, engaging with multiple methods and levels of analysis that will help to avoid simplistic, even damaging diagnoses of causes, and by doing so, significantly improve the chances of arriving at effective solutions.