The public health approach to problem-solving, whether the problem be infectious diseases or violence, involves a four-step process of applied science: identify the magnitude and impact of the problem; determine modifiable risk and protective factors for the population under study; develop and evaluate prevention programs; and implement and disseminate information about effective programs to a wider audience. For the public health model to work well, it must be a continuous cycle of research, program development, program evaluation, implementation, and information dissemination. Public health focuses most of its violence-reduction activities on primary prevention; it is viewed as proactive. Some public health practitioners view criminal justice approaches as exclusively reactive, but many criminal justice practitioners and educators view this characterization as inaccurate. Although the criminal justice process is reactive in focusing on crimes already committed, deterrence as a mechanism of crime prevention can be both proactive and reactive. Absolute deterrence has a primary preventive effect by stopping an individual from ever committing a criminal act. Specific deterrence operates at the secondary preventive level, lowering the likelihood that a person who has committed a criminal act once will do the same act again. All forms of deterrence rely on the fear of punishment, a negative response to behavior. It is this use of punishment for antisocial behavior that distinguishes the criminal justice approach to violence prevention from public health approaches that focus on pro-social mechanisms. This paper illustrates these differing approaches to violence prevention by comparing the public health and criminal justice approaches to preventing sexual assault on university campuses. An integration of the two approaches is discussed. 40 references