Next month, the American Academy of Pediatrics will, for the first time, address the problem of childhood bullying when it publishes a policy statement on preventing school violence. Goals include changing school culture and re-socializing the bully to change behavior, including…

…a recommendation that schools adopt a prevention model developed by Dan Olweus, a research professor of psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway, who first began studying the phenomenon of school bullying in Scandinavia in the 1970s. The programs, he said, “work at the school level and the classroom level and at the individual level; they combine preventive programs and directly addressing children who are involved or identified as bullies or victims or both.”

Dr. Perri Klass discusses the role of pediatricians, parents and schools in solving bullying problems in a new article on the NYTimes website:  At Last, Facing Down the Bullies (and their enablers).