National Bully Prevention Campaign

Stephanie Bryn: Good afternoon everyone. I'm Stephanie Bryn from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the Director of Injury and Violence Prevention. And today we have a wonderful panel discussion including some videos. We wanted to start out the session this afternoon with kind of a teaser or a trigger tape that kind of shows what we're talking about when we're talking about bullying. You'll hear from experts today. You'll hear about the international scene, you'll hear about the nation scene as it relates to bullying prevention, and then you'll hear about the upcoming HRSA MCHB Bullying Prevention Campaign. This campaign will emphasize and be focused at tweens, children 9 through 13 years of age, and all who influence their lives, and that's pretty much all of us. We hope that this campaign stimulates everyone to action and to get involved in stopping bullying and improving respect for all. I'm going to introduce the panel and then each of them will take their place in this panel discussion. Mary Davidson Overpeck, with a doctorate in public health is an Epidemiologist at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. She has a B.S./B.A. in Statistics and as I said a doctorate of Public Health with joint degrees in Maternal and Child Health and in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina. Most of her work has been devoted in studies of U.S. children at the national level and she is the principle investigator for the U.S. component of the International Study of Health Behaviors in School Children. She has worked extensively on bullying prevention issues as a result of this HBSC study. After Mary speaks, Dr. Susan Limber, the Associate Director of the Institute of Family and Neighborhood Life and Associate Professor of Psychology at Clemson University, will speak. She is a Development Psychologist whose research and writing have focused on legal and psychological issues related to youth violence, particularly the bullying among children in child protection and in children's rights. She directed the first wide-scale implementation and evaluation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in the U.S. And she has co-authored the "Blueprint For Bullying Prevention Program" as well as a number of other articles on the topic of bullying. In recent years she has consulted with numerous schools around the country on the reduction of bullying among school children. She is currently providing consultation on the development and HRSA MCHB's National Bullying Prevention Campaign. The next speaker is Jason Smith who is Vice-President at Widmeyer Communications here in the Washington, D.C. area. Jason is the Project Director for HRSA's National Bullying Prevention Campaign. It's a multi-year communications effort to raise awareness about the effects of bullying among youth. Jason Smith was also Principle Investigator for Widmeyer Figure This Initiative, a three-year, $1.5 million engagement campaign sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the U. S. Department of Education. In that capacity he manages a 10-person team of writers, graphic designers, media outreach specialists, and other professionals as they develop products to engage parents in mathematics education reform. Previously he managed a public awareness campaign conducted by the National Institute for Literacy, comprised of television, print and public radio service announcements, national news conferences and private public partnerships. This campaign has made over 835 million audience impressions and secured over $4.2 million in donated space airtime, including space and time with "Time" magazine, "Sports Illustrated" and "Business Week." It's been a pleasure working with this team assembled today for you to speak with. I want to describe who the leadership team on the National Bullying Prevention Campaign before we get into the nuts and bolts of bullying prevention. Mary Overpeck and Shikita Johnson, Shikita is in the back of the room, have been the MCHB leadership team. Dr. Susan Limber, who you'll hear from in a minute, from Clemson University and Jason Smith. We've been kind of the leadership team working with a collaborative group of people including the HRSA work group, Audrey Allen, Linda *Yonburg, the partners steering committee, many Federal agency representatives and then all agencies and organizations that you would think who would work with children, we've assembled to work with us on this campaign. We took 24 months to develop this campaign, so it wasn't a rush project, but rather, we took time to take a look at the environment and see what is out there and that will be explained a little bit later. But we took our time to gather the partners who we know we'll need and want to act as legs, and arms and legs as this campaign is rolled out and will survive. Implementation working groups was a very important part of this campaign. We knew that it needed to have activities and people using the materials that were developed for the campaign, so we assembled the organizations to work with us in Health and Safety, those who are youth-focused organizations, mental health professionals and their organizations, law and justice and their organizations, faith and religious leaders and organizations and educators, professionals and organizations. We have many private sector partners. Two that I want to mention today is the National Association of Broadcasters. When we have our PSA's, which are completed, and we want airtime, they became an extremely valuable partner and they step forward right away to work with us. Another organization, NBC Television, at their corporate level in New York, stepped forward to do PSA's that they produce where they use their talent in the NBC News and NBC programming to do The More You Know campaign, which you probably have heard where they use their talent and bullying prevention was part of what they wanted to do in the next year or two. We have a national teleconference planned in the Year 2004. Post-launch we're planning for website follow-up and maintenance and provision of training and technical assistance, which will be so important for the States and the communities and the programs you direct where we know we can perhaps help and assist in training and technical assistance and we're looking also to be adding private partnerships who will step forward and work with us on the campaign. We know bullying is a very big problem and we're staring to get true recognition, whereas in the past we might mention bullying and people weren't sure. Now they are sure and we're going to tell you a little bit about what bullying looks like internationally, nationally and then our campaign. Our first speaker is Mary Overpeck. Dr. Mary Overpeck.