In today’s news is announced widespread elimination of an “alphabet soup” of divisions and programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Georgia. When government agencies and scientists are categorized as alphabet soup, I know ignorance is on parade. Eliminated has been the Division of Violence Prevention, part of the injury center at CDC. I know the people wielding power do not know, nor do they care, about the leadership of this division across all forms of violence from suicide to elder and child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual violence.

When I founded Stop It Now!, a national organization housed in Hampshire County, it was to CDC and the Division of Violence Prevention I turned. The scientists there understood that child sexual abuse needed to be prevented. That was 30 years ago when dealing with abuse meant child welfare and criminal justice, punishing current acts of abuse. And it depended upon children knowing enough about abuse to report it. What CDC offered then and until this week is the evidence for risk factors in people who perpetrate sexual abuse, strategies for confronting them, and methods to measure the results.

Stop It Now! is not government-funded, but it is government-informed. Without the injury center at the CDC and its research scientists, our children will suffer from ignorance about what works where and why. Lives and health are at stake when knowledge is described as “alphabet soup.” I call that dumb. Dangerous.

Frances Henry

Amherst