Trauma Center-Community Partnerships to Address Firearm Injury: It can be Done

Firearm violence is often framed as a problem of the inner cities and of the criminal justice system. However, this focus may direct attention away from smaller communities that also face firearm violence, including suicide. Ten years ago, the Firearm and Injury Center at Penn (FICAP) developed and implemented a model program in three smaller cities, using trauma centers to spearhead community partnerships. This Issue Brief describes the development and implementation of these partnerships, and highlights one community’s ongoing activities to reduce firearm injury

The experiences of students transitioning back to in-person learning post-Covid-19

This paper reports on a preliminary study that was carried out to understand the experiences of engineering students transitioning to on-campus learning following the Covid-19 pandemic. Two cohorts were considered: year 1 students joining the university for the first time after having experienced considerable disruption for the final two years of their schooling and year 2 students who experienced their first year at university almost entirely online. Data was gathered from student surveys which found that the greatest areas of difficulty for students were the academic level of the programme and the workload. A limited comparison was drawn between this finding and some pre-pandemic data which suggests that the difficulty that students had in this area was higher than for students before the pandemic, indicating that two years of disrupted education may have had a negative impact on students’ preparedness for higher education. Qualitative open-ended responses by students showed that there was a clear preference for face-to-face teaching, but that students see clear benefits to online resources and lecture recordings, and value having some flexibility in how they learn. Some reduction in student performance was noted

Acute Alcohol Consumption, Alcohol Outlets, and Gun Suicide

A case-control study of 149 intentionally self-inflicted gun injury cases (including completed gun suicides) and 302 population-based controls was conducted from 2003 to 2006 in a major US city. Two focal independent variables, acute alcohol consumption and alcohol outlet availability, were measured. Conditional logistic regression was adjusted for confounding variables. Gun suicide risk to individuals in areas of high alcohol outlet availability was less than the gun suicide risk they incurred from acute alcohol consumption, especially to excess. This corroborates prior work but also uncovers new information about the relationships between acute alcohol consumption, alcohol outlets, and gun suicide. Study limitations and implications are discussed

Novel Linkage of Individual and Geographic Data to Study Firearm Violence

Firearm violence is the end result of a causative web of individual-level and geographic risk factors. Few, if any, studies of firearm violence have been able to simultaneously determine the population-based relative risks that individuals experience as a result of what they were doing at a specific point in time and where they were, geographically, at a specific point in time. This paper describes the linkage of individual and geographic data that was undertaken as part of a population-based case-control study of firearm violence in Philadelphia. New methods and applications of these linked data relevant to researchers and policymakers interested in firearm violence are also discussed

The Case for Enhanced Data Collection of Gun Type

Background: National surveillance systems have differentiated long guns into rifles and shotguns but fail to do so for handgun type. We sought to determine whether specific gun type data could be collected and whether knowledge of specific gun types (rifle, shotgun, pistol, revolver) could be used to distinguish gun homicide victims with respect to important injury parameters such as number of wounds. Methods: Data on gun fatalities over a 5-year period in three communities were abstracted from medical examiner/coroner, police, and crime laboratory records. Results: Gun type was obtained for 92% of 490 guns linked to 405 gun homicides. Handguns were associated with more wounds per gun than long guns (p = 0.001) and more entry wounds per gun than long guns (p = 0.002). Among handguns, pistols were associated with more wounds per gun (p \u3c 0.001) and entry wounds per gun (p = 0.001) than revolvers. These same associations were not found among specific long gun types (i.e., rifles and shotguns). Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that information about gun type can be obtained and that significant differences exist in wounds per gun between long guns and handguns and between pistols and revolvers. Classification of long guns into rifles and shotguns and handguns into pistols and revolvers should be included in local, regional, and national data collection systems

Fears of Violence During Morning Travel to School

PURPOSE: Children\u27s safety as they travel to school is a concern nationwide. We investigated how safe children felt from the risk of being assaulted during morning travel to school. METHODS: Children between 10 and 18 years old were recruited in Philadelphia and interviewed with the aid of geographic information system (GIS) mapping software about a recent trip to school, situational characteristics, and how safe they felt as they travelled based on a 10-point item (1 = very unsafe, 10 = very safe). Ordinal regression was used to estimate the probability of perceiving different levels of safety based on transportation mode, companion type, and neighborhood characteristics. RESULTS: Among 65 randomly selected subjects, routes to school ranged from 7 to 177 minutes (median = 36) and .1-15.1 street miles (median = 1.9), and included between 1-5 transportation modes (median = 2). Among students interviewed, 58.5% felt less than very safe (i.e.,8, for example, was .99 while in a car and .94 while on foot but was .86 and .87 when on a public bus or trolley. Probability was .98 while with an adult but was .72 while with another child and .71 when alone. Also, perceived safety was lower in areas of high crime and high density of off-premise alcohol outlets. CONCLUSIONS: Efforts that target situational risk factors are warranted to help children feel safe over their entire travel routes to school

Alcohol Consumption, Alcohol Outlets, and the Risk of Being Assaulted With a Gun

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65835/1/j.1530-0277.2009.00912.x.pd