Dr. Kathleen Carlson writes that decreasing gun violence doesn’t need to be politicized. “Simply as previous public well being initiatives diminished accidents with out banning vehicles or cigarettes, we are able to additionally save lives and stop struggling attributable to gun accidents.” (OHSU/Christine Torres Hicks)
U.S. Surgeon Basic Vivek Murthy, the nation's high public well being spokesperson, just lately issued a landmark advisory on gun violence, marking an necessary milestone in addressing gun violence as a public well being challenge.
Dr. Kathleen Carlson (OHSU)
As director of the Gun Violence Prevention Analysis Heart at Oregon Well being & Science College, I couldn’t agree extra with taking a public well being method to decreasing the immense harms that gun violence causes to our youngsters, households, and communities. In actual fact, Dr. Murthy’s advisory paper highlights a few of the similar analysis, practices, and coverage methods that inform our heart’s work to scale back firearm deaths and accidents in Oregon.
On the heart, we deal with evaluating insurance policies and practices utilizing a public well being method just like profitable efforts in previous many years to scale back motorized vehicle crashes and tobacco-related illnesses.
In Multnomah County, we’re collaborating with neighborhood organizations, faith-based teams, social service companies, legal justice organizations, and survivors to assessment incidents of interpersonal gun violence and determine missed alternatives for intervention, with the purpose of stopping these tragedies sooner or later. Moreover, we’re finding out using Oregon’s Excessive Threat Safety Order regulation statewide and the influence of Therapeutic Harm Folks, a hospital-based violence intervention program run by Portland Alternatives Industrialization Heart, at OHSU and Legacy Emanuel Medical Heart.
Our heart can be centered on decreasing unintended gun accidents and suicides, which don’t at all times make headlines however are nonetheless the reason for the overwhelming majority of gun violence accidents and deaths in our state. We’re coaching OHSU medical college students to speak to sufferers about firearm storage practices and interesting veterans and well being care professionals on the Portland VA Well being Care System to develop a culturally competent firearm damage prevention toolkit tailor-made to veterans residing in rural areas.
To handle an issue, we should first perceive the underlying knowledge. To that finish, our heart labored with state authorities and emergency departments to provide the primary statewide firearm damage knowledge report and dashboard in 2022.
Whereas the problem of gun violence is complicated and infrequently politicized, we consider that stopping the lack of these lives just isn’t a “left” or “proper” political challenge. Simply as previous public well being initiatives diminished accidents with out banning vehicles or cigarettes, we are able to additionally save lives and stop the struggling attributable to gun accidents.
Dr. Kathleen Carlson directs the OHSU Firearm Violence Prevention Analysis Heart. She is an damage epidemiologist on the OHSU-Portland State College Faculty of Public Well being and a principal investigator on the VA Portland Well being Companies Innovation Analysis Heart.