- Risk factors refer to any kind of
challenges, adversities or situations that
increase the likelihood
that a child will be harmed
or experience some kind of problems.
And risk factors include
many different kinds of adversities.
They include common adversities like
you know having violence
in the neighborhood,
to much more rare kinds
of risk factors like
experiencing a tsunami
in your neighborhood.
So it covers any kind of
adverse childhood experiences.
A promotive factor is something that
is good for children
and good for development
under all kinds of situations.
These are the kinds of
assets and resources that
help healthy development for everybody.
And often, promotive factors
are the same across the world.
And there are cultural differences but,
for example, you know, good
parenting and good schools
and you know, having you know a brain,
a human brain that's working well.
Those are all really important
for human developments.
So, people do better,
they grow up more healthy
if they have, you know, the kinds of
families that are supportive and
opportunities to learn at school
and that sort of thing.
Protective factors are...
Have a special role to play.
These are resources or
advantages that have a
are particularly important in adversity.
And what's interesting about
protective factors is that,
some of them are also promotive,
for example, having good
parents that love you and
support you is important
under all kinds of situations.
But parents are special
because they can really
act and react to threats and
do even more for their children so,
parents can take special
extra efforts and actions
under adversity to try to help their kids.
Similarly, you know, you can have a school
that is helping children to learn
but when something terrible happens,
like there's a threat to the school
or a war breaks out in
the country of the school.
Schools can you know, do extra things
to provide resources for children
and that sort of thing.
And then there are also some
protective factors that are
particularly good only
when there is a threatening situation.
So, I think of those as,
for example emergency responders.
You know, you can have a fire department
and you can have people
who are there trained
to help in emergencies,
to deal with fires or floods
or provide emergency care.
And they really play
the most important role
only when there's a real
threat happening right now.
So, all of these factors,
the threats, the resources
and the special resources
that really work under adversity
all play a role in how any person,
or family or community will do
in the case of an emergency.
Risk and Protective factors really vary
both across situation
and also across culture.
To start with situation,
the kind of threats and resources
that are around in ordinary life
under kind of typical
situations around the world,
are pretty fundamental
to human development.
So, you know, they include
the everyday stressors
that children face.
Life has many ups and downs,
even life in very advantaged situations.
But when you talk about adversity
and protective factors in very serious,
threatening situations such as
children in a war zone,
children caught up in a
really dangerous situation.
You know, the kinds of threats
that children experience in war zones
are often much more frequent
intense and life threatening.
And we know from a lot of
research that when children...
When lives are threatened,
and the lives of the
parents are threatened
that poses a really different
situation for children.
And the kind of resources
that need to be mobilized
when you have severe life
threatening violence that's
ongoing and repeated are
really quite different.
And the, you know, the
burden on the community,
the family and the children is different.
One of the most dangerous
aspects of armed conflict
is that it threatens the
central protective factors
for human development.
So, when parents are injured
or separated from their children,
children lose the most important
protective factor in their lives.
And the other problem is that
a lot of the normal resources that are in
communities just everyday
that help people adapt
and live a healthy life are often damaged
or destroyed by conflict.
So that, everything is harder to come by.
The basic survival needs of food
and water and healthcare are in danger
and so forth.
So, it's really quite
a different situation
and it makes a difference
how long the threats go on.
If you have ongoing violence,
that can pu...
You know kind of really begin to overwhelm
all the resources anybody,
any family, any community
can put together to
help address the issues.
