Considerable progress can be made in understanding the roots and burden of gun violence if the U.S. commits to a research agenda that addresses five high-priority areas, suggests a new report.
Those five areas are the characteristics of gun violence, risk and protective factors, prevention and other interventions, gun safety technology, and the influence of video games and other media, according to “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” which was released in June by the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. The report stems from a presidential executive order issued in January that charged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with pinpointing the most pressing firearm-related violence research needs.
The presidential order came after the Dec. 12 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., during which a gunman killed 26 people.
“The complexity and frequency of gun-related violence, combined with its impact on the health and safety of the nation’s residents, make it a topic of considerable public health importance,” said Alan Leshner, PhD, chair of the report’s authoring committee, in a news release. “Therefore, when developing its agenda, the committee took a public health approach that focused on gun violence problems associated with significant levels of injuries and fatalities.”
In introducing its research recommendations, the report’s authors noted that the U.S. is home to the highest firearm-related death rate among industrialized nations. In 2010, more than 105,000 U.S. residents were killed or injured in a firearm-related incident, with suicides outnumbering homicides for all age groups between 2000 and 2010.
The report recommended taking a public health approach to gun violence that includes a focus on prevention, a focus on using scientific methodologies to identify risks and trends and engaging multiple disciplines to confront the problem.
“Although this research agenda is an initial, not all-encompassing, set of questions, it could help better define the causes and prevention of firearm violence in order to develop effective policies to reduce its occurrence and impact in the U.S.,” Leshner said. “Similar approaches to public health problems have produced successes in lowering tobacco use, accidental poisoning, and motor vehicle fatalities.”
Within each of the five priority areas, the report identified key research topics. For example, within characteristics of gun violence, the report recommended researching the scope and motivation of gun ownership as well as differences between fatal and nonfatal gun use.
Under the research priority addressing prevention and interventions, the report called for understanding whether reducing criminal access to legally purchased guns reduces violence and exploring whether childhood education efforts reduce firearm violence, among other topic areas.
Within the latter priority research area, report authors noted that “findings have been mixed on the effectiveness” of firearm violence prevention efforts. For instance, while limiting hours of alcohol sales at bars and nightclubs has been linked with reduced violence, public school safety education has proven less effective.
“I’m a scientist,” said Leshner, who also serves as CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “I believe that having a knowledge base is central to the development of effective policies…This report says what data we need, not what to do with the data. We’re not in the policy business, we’re in the science business.”
For example, on the influence of video games and media — a topic that CDC directed the committee to address in its report — there is a common assumption that video games may lead to greater violence, however there is no actual data to support that hypothesis, he said.
“It’s a very good example where we don’t necessarily want people going on intuition or common sense,” he said. “If we can provide a fact base, all the better.”
However, CDC’s ability to act on the report’s recommendations is also up to members of Congress, who must approve President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget proposal. In his budget, Obama calls for $10 million to support CDC-led firearm violence research. The proposed budget also calls on Congress to approve $20 million to expand CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System to every state. The system, which now collects data from 18 states, includes information on intimate partner homicides, suicides, unintentional firearm injury deaths and more.
Research on gun violence has been hindered in recent years by a 1996 law that said CDC and other federal agencies could not use funds to advocate for gun control and by a drop in federal funding. While the setbacks did not eliminate such research, they deterred some from pursuing it.
Leshner said he is hopeful that the research agenda will move forward. He noted that at public workshops gathering input for the committee’s report, a wide point of view was represented and “everyone agreed that we need to have a knowledge base and so I am optimistic that people will understand the importance of this.”
The study was sponsored by CDC and the National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
For more information on the report, visit www.iom.edu.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
