This special issue of Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada is timely, as child maltreatment is a significant public health problem; globally, the number affected is at least in the hundreds of millions. One-quarter of adults report having been physically abused and over one-third emotionally abused as children; one in 5 women and one in 13 men report having been sexually abused. ^{Footnote 1-3} Recent national surveys of violence against children conducted in Africa and in other low- and middle-income countries reveal rates of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse even higher than the global rates. ^{Footnote 4}

"Imagine," Dr James Mercy, Director of the Violence Prevention Division at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ^{Footnote 5} (US-CDC) suggests, "that you woke up this morning and newspaper headlines said that scientists had discovered a new disease. The scientists reported that up to 1 billion children worldwide were exposed to this disease every year. And that over the course of their lifetimes children exposed to this disease were at greater risk for mental illnesses like depression and anxiety disorders; at greater risk for chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer; at greater risk of infectious diseases like HIV; and, if that wasn't enough, at greater risk for involvement in social problems like crime and drug abuse. If we had such a disease, what do you think we'd do? The truth is we do have such a "disease"; it's violence against children."