Lecture Vol. 12 #14 -- September 23, 1987 cover Address by C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD Surgeon General U.S. Public Health Service U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Presented at the Surgeon General's Northwest Regional Conference on Interpersonal Violence Seattle, Washington September 23, 1987 I began by thanking the Steering Committee and especially the Chair of that committee, Karil Klingbeil, whom I had invited to the Leesburg Conference one year and eleven months before to talk to 170 of her colleagues from around the country. I wanted her to share her experiences establishing and running a workable interdisciplinary organization with a major hospital - one that deals compassionately and professionally with victims of violence. That's what she did, she did it in a very impressive way, and she wrote later to tell me she was starting working on a regional conference modeled on Leesburg. Naturally, I was delighted. I also thanked our resident representative in region 10, Assistant Surgeon General Dorothy H. Mann. I reviewed a little bit of Leesburg and repeated that I believed then and I believe it still, that in the long run people in medicine and in public health will be the ones who will generate the most effective ways to prevent violence in our homes and our communities. I then listed the number of regional conferences that we'd had, some of the things that were happening in my office, including the joint law/health initiative and in general, mentioned a number of the things I'd referred to in my address to the 50th Anniversary Annual Conference of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 13, 1987, an address which is shortly before this one in this archive. Among things I hadn't mentioned before, I talked about my meetings with the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a thirty second, TV Public Service Announcement on spouse abuse and woman battering, and the Pittsburgh Woman's Center Manual on the treatment of women victims of domestic violence. As for the previous lecture mentioned above, I went into the statistics of the 4 million people who are among our must vulnerable citizens. My message may sound simple, but it isn't. We need to be assured that each community is prepared to save the life of anyone of its members - even the most vulnerable and humble or disliked of its members - before we can say such a community is - itself-worth saving. I spoke of the need for a broader dissemination of our message to all of our colleagues in health care and in health-related social service. That led to a discussion of public education as well. I alluded to the difficulty in AIDS education as an example of how tough it could be. Just as we have to be very careful that AIDS does not poison the way Americans have always responded to illness and disease, we have the same concern about the generous, compassionate response - one that has never been mean spirited, pinch penny, or hate ridden - to interpersonal violence. All ages vulnerable Battering of pregnant women Betrayal of American tradition Betrayal of personal compassion & fair play Betrayal of professional ethics Child victims of sexual abuse Civil rights trauma of the 60s & 70s Comparisons of AIDS education to violence education Cost of domestic violence 800 number hot lines Frequency of interpersonal violence Homicide against homosexuals Homophobic violence Institutional barriers to good care Interpersonal violence in homes, schools, & streets "Law/Health Initiatives" Living without fear Local women shelters March of Dimes videotape National Domestic Violence Awareness Month Need for color blindness in AIDS Perpetrators of violence Pittsburgh Women's Center Manual on Treatment Prevention of violence in homes & communities Public education Public Service Announcement on Spouse Abuse & Woman Battering Response to AIDS victims Response to illness & disease Response to interpersonal violence Series of regional conferences Services to victims & their families Spousal abuse State coalitions Statistics on battering Teaching of violence in medical schools Technical Bulletin of ACOG Videotape: "Crime Against the Future" Violence & emergency medicine Violence & long-term physical & mental health care Violence & people in medicine & public health Violence & the police & the courts Women battering American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists Detroit, Miami, Los Angeles Karil Klingbeil Dorothy H. Mann, Assistant Surgeon General Surgeon General's Workshop at Leesburg