Federal Resources

CDC's overview topic page on adolescent health, including alcohol, tobacco, and substance use; adolescent injuries; and youth violence.

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is the world’s largest, ongoing telephone health survey system, tracking health conditions and risk behaviors in the United States yearly since 1984. Currently, data are collected monthly in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam.

This informational booklet is targeted to workers ages 13 to 18 in non-farm industries. The booklet provides facts youth need to stay safe and healthy at work. The guide also informs young workers about the jobs they can and cannot do and about permissible work hours as defined under Federal child labor laws. The booklet also helps youth recognize common workplace hazards and teaches young people about their rights and responsibilities on non-farm jobs.

The possibility of public health emergencies arising in the United States concerns many people in the wake of recent hurricanes, tsunamis, acts of terrorism, and the threat of pandemic influenza. Taking advance action helps people deal with disasters of all sorts much more effectively when they do occur. To help, CDC and the American Red Cross have teamed up to answer common questions and provide step-by-step guidance.

This sourcebook looks at the effectiveness of four types of violence prevention strategies: parents and family-based; home visiting; social-cognitive; and mentoring. The sourcebook documents the science behind each best practice and offers a comprehensive directory of resources for more information about programs that have used these practices.

This website is CDC’s primary source of information and resources for preparing for and responding to public health emergencies. This site continues to keep the public informed about public health emergencies and provides the information needed to protect and save lives. The site features specific information and resources focused on different types of disasters including bioterrorism, chemical emergencies, natural disasters, radiation emergencies, mass casualties, and others.

A special online supplement from the Journal of Adolescent Health reports on the findings of an expert panel convened by the CDC to better understand the link between bullying and suicide-related behaviors. 

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works to protect public health and safety by providing information to enhance health decisions, and it promotes health through partnerships with state health departments and other organizations.

CDC’s Violence Prevention site provides a wide variety of materials that can help professionals understand violence and stop it before it starts.

The Federal Network for Young Worker Safety and Health strives to prevent occupational injuries among workers from ages 14 through 24.

Principles of Prevention is a free, online violence prevention training, available on the CDC’s VetoViolence website. This dynamic and interactive course teaches the key concepts of primary prevention, the public health approach, and the social-ecological model. It also features interviews with leading experts and compelling stories, helps professionals to understand the fundamentals of effective violence prevention, and helps them to become familiar with the growing body of research on what works.

This Web site provides information on and links to school health strategies, research and evaluation tools, Youth Risk Behavior Survey data, evidence-based guidelines for school health programs, and adolescent and school health program resources and tools.

The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a free resource listing programs and policies that improve health and prevent disease.  The Program Planning Resources section of the site outlines the types of steps that are generally used in program planning, along with selected resources that may be useful at each step.

Information from the CDC on the topics of injury and violence prevention, including topic areas, publications, and other resources.

In this article, two experts from CDC discuss a project they conducted in Haiti where they distributed handheld solar lights to women and girls in an effort to increase their sense of safety when leaving their homes to use latrines at night. The researchers also describe the implications of their findings for preventing and reducing violence against women in humanitarian settings. 

This infographic presents information about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and how they affect behavior and health.

This compendium provides research and prevention specialists with a set of tools to evaluate programs to prevent youth violence. The compendium includes more than 100 measures, mostly focused on individuals' violence-related attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

As the Nation's principal health statistics agency, this site compiles statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the health of our people.

This document provides researchers, prevention specialists, and health educators with tools to measure a range of bullying experiences: bully perpetration, bully victimization, bully-victim experiences, and bystander experiences. Some researchers continue to examine the risk and protective factors associated with bullying experiences. Others are working to design, implement, and evaluate bully prevention interventions aimed at reducing bully victimization and perpetration, as well as increasing prosocial bystander involvement in bullying situations. The ability to measure bullying experiences broadly and completely is crucial to the success of these activities. This document represents a starting point from which researchers can consider a set of psychometrically sound measures for assessing self-reported incidence and prevalence of a variety of bullying experiences.

This Center strives to enhance the health and safety of all children exposed to hazards associated with agricultural work and rural environments. The Center is funded by HHS/CDC/NIOSH and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau within HHS/Health Resources Services Administration

Youth violence can be prevented. This strategy provides a framework for action.

Fact sheet about playground injuries in the United States. Includes an overview, occurrence, and cost information.

This report describes the critical problem of youth violence and provides information and action steps that public health and community leaders, young people, families, caregivers, and other adults that work with youth can take to prevent it. 

CDC has launched the redesigned VetoViolence website. The site features interactive and engaging evidence- and practice-based tools, trainings, and resources to help stop violence before it starts.

“Sexual Violence Surveillance: Uniform Definitions and Recommended Data Elements” includes the latest information available for standardizing sexual violence surveillance definitions and data elements. The use of common terminology and data elements can promote higher quality and timely incidence and prevalence data.