Violence and Health

Our work examines the impacts of violence on physical and mental health, and the role of resilience, across generations. 

Example of Projects


Research led by Drs. Rana Dajani, Connie Mulligan, and Catherine Panter-Brick, is ongoing with three groups of Syrian families, displaced to Jordan as a result of war. Our goal is to increase our understanding the epigenetic signatures of war trauma exposures, and the extent to which they are heritable. This will help us to understand to extent to which fetal and child development are malleable and impacted by trauma. The project was initiated at the request of Syrian participants, to document the intergenerational consequences of war-related violence.  To-date, this is the only multi-generation study of the epigenetic effects of trauma in humans.

See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31314763/


Violence & Health Working Group

Yale’s University Violence and Health Group functions as a center of expertise for the integration of science, practice, and policy in the area of violence prevention and health promotion. Yale University’s Violence & Health Groupis a consulting group for the WHO’s Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA), a network of WHO Member States, international agencies and civil society organizations working to prevent violence. It also provides academic support to researchers interested in the emerging research and interventions on violence and public health.  Led by Drs. Kaveh Khoshnood and Bandy Lee, this Yale initiative aims to significantly advance research and teaching efforts on issues of violence and health - an emerging focus of study in public health, medicine, and the social sciences.