Violence as a public health issue

In recent years, there have been calls in the US and in Britain for a publi c health approach to violence and violent crime. This article considers the implications of such an approach for the definition and understanding of t he 'problem' of violence and appropriate ways of tackling it. The discussio n challenges the assumptions implicit in some of the literature that this i s an intrinsically progressive and unproblematic perspective. This proposed expansion of the domain of contemporary public health poses dilemmas for i mplementation, as well as issues concerning the nature and process of gover nance in contemporary societies such as Britain.