I work in a Level 1 Trauma Center in the state of Ohio in the United States. I am tasked with decreasing injury before it occurs by providing culturally-relevant injury prevention in my community. One thing you should know: Ohioans. Love. Guns. Many rely on it for game hunting, protection, sport, etc. Another thing you […]
Category: Gun violence
Treating firearm violence like a contagious disease
Following up on a previous post by aelkhatib. When I first heard about the 1996 amendment prohibiting the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on firearm violence prevention I was very surprised. I could not believe that there was a legal mechanism that would prevent researchers from studying the causes of something […]
Concern for prehospital care/ambulance services
I spent last week travelling in Adjumani district (located in Northern Uganda) as part of an exercise in improving the quality of immunization data through support supervision and mentor-ship. This required us as a team to visit as many of the health facilities in the district as possible. Due to the limited sources of our […]
A Gap in Gun Violence Injury Prevention Data in the United States
Do guns make people safer? Do comprehensive back ground checks limit gun violence in the United States? Which gun violence or firearm safety interventions work in our states? What effect do right-to-carry laws have on our communities? Nine years ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was on the forefront of trying to […]
More background on our blogging team
Blog 3: So today I wanted to share some more background on our blogging team. As an applied social psychologist, I find this information very interesting indeed! What excites you about being part of the Injury Prevention social media editorial team? Sheree Bekker: The invaluable conversation that has sprung up around scholarly work through the […]
Hope for future gun control
Last week was the anniversary of the horrific Newtown shootings. That was when I saw an item on Mother Jones that prompted this posting. That item described the work of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA). This group was founded after the Newtown massacre and it has had several important victories, largely […]
Gangs, Violence, and a Flood of Migrant Children
There has been a tremendous amount of media attention in the United States on what is described as a flood of migrant children illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. Statistics referenced in a recent NPR article estimate that more than 50,000 unaccompanied children have been detained by US border patrol in the last eight months. http://www.npr.org/2014/06/20/323657817/from-a-stream-to-a-flood-migrant-kids-overwhelm-u-s-border-agents […]
Guns on Campus in Idaho
Today, the Idaho House of Representatives will be discussing legislation that has already passed the state senate that would allow individuals who have a concealed weapon’s permit to carry a gun on college and university campuses in the state. One of the arguments in favor of this legislation is that someone who is considering carrying […]
Gun violence in movies
More on guns… There was a really interesting paper titled “Gun Violence Trends in Movies” recently published in Pediatrics. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/132/6/1014.full.pdf This study examined the presence of gun related violence in top grossing major motion pictures and concluded that gun violence in films has grown substantially. Not a huge surprise but what was interesting is that […]
When the Right to Bear Arms Includes the Mentally Ill
Also in the New York Times a short while ago was a piece describing what advocates of gun control have to contend with when even mental health checks are challenged. This is an edited version of that article: Last April, workers at Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut called the police to report that a psychiatric patient […]