GENERAL COMMENTARY article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1662415
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Child Abuse from Clinical, Legal, and Forensic PerspectivesView all articles
Commentary: Factors affecting the knowledge levels, awareness, attitudes, and behaviors of family physicians about child abuse and neglect in Turkiye and changes in them with the training provided
Provisionally accepted
Schawanya Kaewpitoon Kaewpitoon Rattanapitoon1*
Natnapa Heebkaew Padchasuwan2Nav La3
Nathkapach Kaewpitoon Kaewpitoon4- 1FMC Medical Center of Thailand, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand
- 2Khon Kaen University, Nai Mueang, Thailand
- 3International University, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
- 4FMC Medical Center of Thailand, Nakhon Ratcasima, Thailand
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Child abuse and neglect (CAaN) remain under-recognized in primary care settings globally despite their lifelong detrimental impacts. Bayraktar et al. conducted a pivotal intervention demonstrating significant improvement in Turkish family physicians’ knowledge and awareness through structured in-service training. This commentary situates their findings within broader international evidence, highlighting (1) the rarity of pre-post intervention studies among primary care physicians, (2) their impressive large effect sizes (Cohen’s d > 2.0 across domains), and (3) existing global gaps in standardizing CAaN training content, follow-up implementation, and medico-legal protection protocols. Further, it identifies unaddressed dimensions including interprofessional collaboration, culturally tailored communication techniques for disclosure, digital decision-support integration, and longitudinal tracking of reporting behaviors post-training. The study sets a foundation for embedding mandatory recurrent CAaN training within family medicine curricula and health system policy. Future studies should adopt mixed-methods and multisite designs to assess long-term behavioral outcomes and child protection efficacy.
Keywords: Child Abuse, child neglect, family medicine, In-service training, Primary Care, Health Systems, Medical Education
Received: 09 Jul 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kaewpitoon Rattanapitoon, Padchasuwan, La and Kaewpitoon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Schawanya Kaewpitoon Kaewpitoon Rattanapitoon, FMC Medical Center of Thailand, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand
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