Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research: Part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, its Center for Gun Policy and Research takes a public health approach toward the reduction of gun-related deaths and injuries. The center, led by Director Daniel Webster and Co-Director Jon Vernick, focuses on gun policy and gun violence prevention research, firearm safety technology, preventing firearm-related domestic violence, reducing suicides and homicides with firearms, public opinion polls, and the impact of state policies on law enforcement assault and homicides. In addition to its own work, in also includes references to other gun-related health resources. Press contact: Alicia Samuels, alsamuel@jhsph.edu or 914-720-4635.
NAS Trauma Systems report (2016)
This report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine looks at the nation’s health care system in caring for trauma patients – both U.S. service members as well as civilians – across the continuum of care from initial injury and hospitalization to rehabilitation and other care. The report, “A National Trauma Care System: Integrating Military and Civilian Trauma Systems to Achieve Zero Preventable Deaths,” looks closely at the experience of those who served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the Institutes of Medicine panel calls for a joint military-civilian national trauma care system to improve care nationwide. The U.S. Defense Department, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American College of Surgeons, among others, sponsored the report.
Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy
Robert J. Sampson, Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Felton Earls, Science (1997)
The willingness of neighbors to band together for the common good – their collective efficacy – is tightly linked to levels of neighborhood violence, this influential paper revealed. The authors surveyed about 8,800 Chicago residents, and developed a measure of collective efficacy to compare neighborhoods. The lack of collective efficacy may largely explain why people living in poor neighborhoods are more likely to be victims of violent crime. Based on the findings of this study and others that followed, a number of cities have begun testing ways to mobilize collective efficacy as a way to reduce violent crime.
Prevention of injury and violence in the USA
Tamara M. Haegerich and others, The Lancet (2014)
Injuries and violence kill more young people in the U.S. than any other cause of death. The burden of these deaths varies enormously by race, ethnicity and social class, and this paper provides recent numbers. Deaths by homicide, for instance, are more than eight times more prevalent among blacks than among whites, and homicide deaths are three times more common among American Indians and Alaskan Natives than among whites between the ages of 1 to 30 years old. The authors explain how socioeconomic factors contribute to the unequal burden of violent death.
Years off Your Life? The Effects of Homicide on Life Expectancy by Neighborhood and Race/Ethnicity in Los Angeles County
Matthew Redelings & others, J Urban Health (2010)
Homicide takes two full years off the expected life span of men who are African American in Los Angeles County, and in some low-income sections of LA, homicide subtracts nearly five years from the expected life span of black men. The authors analyzed life expectancy in years and expected life years lost due to homicide during the years 2001–2006.
A Population-Based Analysis of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status and Injury Admission Rates and In-Hospital Mortality
Ben L. Zarzaur and others, J Am Coll Surg (2010)
The risk of violent injury (and other injuries) rose with each step of decreasing neighborhood socioeconomic status in this ten-year study of hospitalizations in Memphis, Tenn., and surrounding Shelby County.
Vacant Properties and Violence in Neighborhoods
Charles C. Branas & others, ISRN Public Health (2013)
The so-called Broken Windows theory has led to initiatives that try to reduce violence by restoring deteriorating neighborhoods and sealing or removing vacant buildings. Researchers in Philadelphia found a significant association between the risk of violent assault and the presence of abandoned buildings and vacant lots, even after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhoods. Vacant properties also had the strongest effect size, prevailing in over almost a dozen well-known indicators of disadvantage.
Urban–Rural Shifts in Intentional Firearm Death: Different Causes, Same Results
Charles C. Branas and others, Am J Public Health (2004)
Firearm death is as pervasive a public health problem in rural counties as it is in urban counties in the United States, the authors found. The rate of firearm suicide in the most rural communities closely resembled that of firearm homicide in the largest cities.