The experience of physicians and other health care providers in child abuse pediatrics in the last six decades includes successes and failures, which can offer critical insights to inform the growing field of health care providers focusing on elder abuse clinical practice and research. We identify and describe in detail relevant lessons learned, including balancing an urgent call to action with a need for robust evidence to support clinical conclusions. We discuss solutions to research challenges, including the lack of a uniform gold standard for abuse diagnosis and how to ethically recruit subjects who may have cognitive impairment and also be crime victims. We offer recommendations on recruiting and training a specialized health care workforce. We make suggestions for health care providers about how to navigate the legal world including issues with expert testimony and also how to participate in policymaking and development of rational systems. We emphasize the importance of developing and supporting partnerships within the field, with allied fields inside and outside medicine, and internationally. We also highlight the value of connecting researchers and clinicians focused on different types of family violence.
Keywords: abuse/neglect; child abuse; crime; family issues.