or neighborhood for fear of violence even if not directly impacted by violence. It is important to see how young people in Lowell are affected by violence. These data indicated that youth violence is a substantial issue in Lowell. Programs and organizations that provide services to teens may be key in bringing down youth violence rates in the community. Youth violence awareness is crucial to prevent as much violence as possible in the future for younger generations in Lowell. This study provides an impetus for future research. To improve on the current study, future research should use a larger and randomly-recruited sample to accurately represent the population. A further study that could be developed from this pilot study is to create a community based program for youth violence and assess the success of this program. The results of this study may have low generalizability to other populations. Because of the limited number of participants and the possibility of under-reporting, it is preferable to create a crosssectional study with a larger and more randomized sample. This study was focused on the Lowell community, specifically youths between the ages 14 and 24, therefore the results are not applicable to other communities, age brackets, or ethnicities. Our cross-sectional study described the prevalence of violence among young people within the Lowell community. There were significant reports of feeling affected by violence, having property stolen or damaged, being bullied, and assaulted. This study should help in raising awareness about teen violence and creating programs that would help reduce the problem.
Acknowledgments We are appreciative of the efforts of Linda Sou, Stephanie Buchholz, and the rest of the team at the Lowell Community Health Center Teen Coalition that helped us throughout this study.
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