The End of Violence

A paradigm-shifting new approach to ending the epidemic of violence in our lifetime, using the same epidemic control playbook that has rid the world of other contagious diseases. "Leads us down an entirely new path to a world beyond violence" -Nicholas Kristoff Violence is often described as a social issue, a moral failing, or a universal human instinct. But in fact, argues epidemiologist and violence prevention expert Dr. Gary Slutkin, violence is disease, infecting people and societies via the same process as any other epidemic. When a shooting occurs in a school, a political figure is assassinated, or an authoritarian leader invades a sovereign nation, it's not just a tragic event-it's an outbreak. As an infectious disease physician, Slutkin helped end the epidemics of cholera, tuberculosis, and AIDS in Africa and Asia with the World Health Organization. This led him to uncover the science of how violence enters our brains, replicates, and gets transmitted from one person to another. In The End of Violence, Dr. Slutkin offers a proven alternative to the failed strategies of deterrence and incarceration: a time-tested public health approach that reduces exposure, interrupts transmission, and prevents the disease from spreading. Using this playbook, Dr. Slutkin's organization, Cure Violence Global, has dramatically reduced or eliminated violence in some of the deadliest neighborhoods in Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, Los Angeles, and across central America. Similar methods have been used to end civil wars, avert a nuclear conflict, and curtail gender-based violence around the world. From mass shootings, to state tyranny, to genocide and war, it's all the same disease-and it also requires the same cure. We already have the tools we need to protect ourselves, heal our communities, and end all forms of violence. It's time to use them.

GARY SLUTKIN, MD is a physician and epidemiologist, widely recognized for pioneering the epidemic control approach to violence. Formerly the director of interventions at the World Health Organization, Dr. Slutkin guided efforts to combat epidemics of tuberculosis, cholera, and AIDS in over twenty countries in Africa and Asia. Returning to the US in 2000, he founded and led Cure Violence Global to adapt these methods to control and reduce violence in communities across the US and around the world. Dr. Slutkin has presented the science and results of treating violence as an epidemic disease to the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the State Department, Harvard Law School, the Institute of Medicine, MIT, the United States Congress, and the National Intelligence Council. The success of his approach has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, CNN, BBC, and in the award-winning film The Interrupters.