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Sir, how refreshing to read of a dental core trainee wishing to take up a career in oral and maxillofacial surgery (A dentist's life, Vol. 221 pages 54–56) – I too was galvanised by experiences as a specialist trainee in those very same hospitals.

Two observations were the foundations of my research career in the specialty: 'We always see more assault patients in a miners' strike' and 'people with fractures often came from a few licensed premises'. Consequently, the circumstances of maxillofacial trauma and the potential for preventing it became the subject of my PhD, which with my Cardiff team's subsequent research, showed that violence which puts people in hospital is very powerfully associated with unemployment and deprivation.1 We also found that the police rarely knew about violence in licensed premises and that the use of the unique information available from trauma patients about where, when and how they were injured could cut violence and its huge costs substantially.2,3 It also became clear from our trials of motivational interviewing that brief advice about alcohol was effective when given to patients having sutures removed in maxillofacial clinics and in other settings.4

These and other discoveries were the basis for advocacy for prevention. In the mid-1990s, our Face of Wales campaign resulted in a switch initially to toughened and then polycarbonate glasses in pubs. The UK Government was persuaded to include health in its Crime and Disorder Act 1997 to mandate Community Safety Partnerships between the police, local authorities and other services. In 2008, the Home Office adopted information sharing by A&Es (the 'Cardiff Model') to tackle alcohol-related violence. In 2010 and 2016, successive UK governments applied this model to reduce all kinds of violence, supported by a new information standard (ISB 1594), and violence reduction nurses across England.

The delivery of effective alcohol advice was embedded in the NHS in Wales through our Have a Word programme; 16,000 professionals have now been trained and the programme adopted by Public Health England. Have a Word is helping to ensure that Dental Defence staff screen 140,000 armed forces personnel for alcohol misuse and advise accordingly.

Encouragingly, since the mid-1990s violence has been decreasing. In Cardiff's only A&E in 2002 we saw 80 patients/week who had been injured in violence. In 2016, there are around 30/week. In 2015, in England and Wales, there were 100,000 fewer violence-related A&E attendances than in 2010.5

My early feet-on-the-ground experiences also resulted, indirectly, in the Police Science Institute at Cardiff University – inspired by the dental school model, the College of Policing, which in turn was inspired by the Royal College model. A national 'What Works Centre' in crime prevention,inspired by the NICE model, was also established.

Go, dental core trainees!