At-risk youth

Taking a stand against violence

Boston's inner-city violence epidemic is all too familiar to Jacqueline Rue, case manager for Boston Healthy Start Initiative at Martha Eliot Health Center (MEHC). For the past six years, Rue has helped struggling mothers overcome the complex challenges involved with physical and mental violence, as well as with housing, hunger and substance abuse. "Many of these mothers have had chaos in their lives," she says of the dozens of Boston women enrolled in the program. "Violence is everywhere." In fact, according to a recent report conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, two-thirds of Boston high school students said they'd witnessed violence in the past year.

Read more: http://www.childrenshospital.org/chnews/08-01-08/taking_a_stand_against_violence.html