Published: $date.format('long_date',$st.publishedDate1)

Jennifer M. Gonzalez, PhD, associate professor and assistant regional dean at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health in Dallas, has been appointed to the National Academies Forum on Global Violence Prevention. Together with other leaders in the field, Gonzalez will work to reduce violence worldwide by promoting the conversation about violence and encouraging evidence-based violence prevention efforts.

Initially launched in 2010 by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, the forum went on hiatus in 2017 due to funding constraints. The National Academies are relaunching the forum in 2019, with the goal of bringing together experts from diverse areas of violence prevention to reduce the burden of violence and promote the healthy development of individuals and communities. 

Violence accounts for 1.4 million deaths each year—of these, 56 percent are suicides, 33 percent are homicides, and 11 percent are the direct result of war or other collective violence, according to World Health Organization statistics cited by the National Academies Forum on Global Violence Prevention.

Gonzalez will join the forum’s efforts focusing on seven categories of violence: child abuse, elder abuse, intimate partner abuse, elder abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, youth violence, collective violence, and self-directed violence. She has published extensively on violence against women, homeless individuals and adolescents, and the relationship of violence to substance abuse.

An invitation to the forum is widely considered an honor because candidates are nominated by members of the National Academies and prominent experts from the field of violence prevention.

“Dr. Gonzalez is highly deserving of this honor, and we congratulate her as she takes on this important public health challenge and works to make our world a safer place to live,” says Bijal Balasubramanian, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences and regional dean of UTHealth School of Public Health in Dallas.