Alexander Butchart is the Prevention of Violence Coordinator in the World Health Organization’s Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention. He is responsible for developing violence prevention policy frameworks and guidelines, coordinating research into violence and its prevention, and helping provide technical support to country and regional programmes. Following his Masters degree in Clinical Psychology in 1986, he worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, as coordinator of a brain injury assessment and rehabilitation clinic, and in 1989 helped conduct the first epidemiological study of non-fatal injuries in that city. In 1994 he was on the steering committee of the Goldstone Commission’s investigation into political violence and children in South Africa. He completed his doctorate in 1995, with a focus on the sociology of public health in Africa. In 1999-2000 he was a visiting scientist in the Karolinska Institutet, and from 1998 to 2001 was principal investigator for the South African Violence and Injury Surveillance Consortium and a founder of the Uganda-based Injury Prevention Initiative for Africa.