Off campus, Matt Cavedon doesn't mind the names that he is called: helper, hero, dreamer.
But inside school, students for years have used uglier terms to taunt the 14-year-old, who is in a wheelchair because of a condition that prevents him from fully extending his limbs. It's bullying, he said, and it happens in different ways to children all the time.
"It just lingers on your mind," said the ninth-grader in Berlin, Conn., who works with a group that creates playgrounds for children with disabilities.
"You can't think clearly. You're preoccupied trying to figure out why they would say this," he said. "It can distract you from your schoolwork, your community, even from your friends. It really does start to get to you."
Bullying was long shrugged off as an afterthought, chalked up to kids being kids.
But in recent years, it has gained serious notice as a factor in deadly campus shootings. More and more states and schools have taken steps to prevent bullying, from class discussions about peer relations to reaching out to parents about the kind of behavior that is expected in school.
But health and safety officials say the country still doesn't realize how pervasive bullying is, how it hampers learning and engenders violence -- and how it can be prevented.
In response, the federal government is planning a $3.4-million campaign to combat bullying, drawing support from more than 70 education, law en- forcement, civic and religious groups. With an expected start next year, the effort will frame bullying as a public health concern, targeting youngsters and the adults who influence them.
The goal is to create a culture change in which bullying is not seen as cool, parents watch for warning signs, kids stand up for each other and teachers are trained to intervene.
Among the campaign's tools are a Web site, animated Web episodes, commercials, and a network of nonprofit groups to help raise awareness and offer tips.
Bullying is aggressive, and repeated behavior based on an imbalance of power among people. It ranges from slapping, kicking and other physical abuse to verbal assaults to the new frontier: cyberbullying, in which children use e-mail and Web sites to humiliate others.
Millions of students -- about three in 10 -- are affected as a bully, victim or both, according to a 2001 study of students in sixth to 10th grade. The research was done by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
