PISC Publications and News Features
“These HOLC maps will undoubtedly remain part of how we understand structural racism in the United States. The question now is how we change the current realities and examine empirically, as clinicians and health researchers, how racism and economic exclusion broadly manifest in the spatial nature of firearm violence risk,” Sara Jacoby and Gina South write in an Annals of Internal Medicine editorial.
Millan AbiNader led a study that demonstrated that an established national dataset – the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) – can be used to surveil domestic assaults in communities and respond to population-specific needs.
Gabi Khazanov and team discovered financial barriers and facilitators to secure firearm and medication storage among veterans with elevated suicide risk, based on interviews with veterans receiving care at the VA.
Terry Richmond moderated a panel of top experts in the field of firearm violence, making sense of “what works and what doesn’t” in the prevention of firearm deaths. Federal research dollars are now being reinvested into the topic after a more than 20-year ban effected by the Dickey Amendment.
A validation study led by Jeff Ebert, Kate McDonald, and Kit Delgado demonstrated that a widely used algorithm for classifying driver trips vs. passenger trips using smartphone kinematics was 97% accurate and robust to a variety of phone characteristics, vehicle features, and driving habits.
Inquiry is accepting submissions to a special issue devoted to improving the evidence base for gun violence prevention strategies designed to operate at the neighborhood and community level. This will be a true or “gold” open-access issue that involves author fees, but some funding is available to help authors cover the fee, and we hope that makes it possible to support young scholars, post-docs, doctoral students, etc.
SAFELab, led by Desmond Upton Patton, created an app to avoid misinterpretation of social media data. In a time when law enforcement actively monitors social media and considers activity as evidence, and reporters use social media in storylines, InterpretMe aims to reduce bias from out-of-context interpretations.
Nazsa Baker led a paper examining how the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) questionnaire relates to the life experiences of violently injured Black men, finding that men in this study inhabit marginalized identities and experiences that are not captured by the current ACEs.
Elinore Kaufman recently spoke with Penn LDI about addressing firearm injury at the source. “As a trauma surgeon, I pride myself on fixing problems, and at Penn, we provide state-of-the-art acute care to our injured patients; including 80 people actively enrolled in our recovery program. But violent injury is a structural disease.”
Desmond Patton published an opinion essay in Newsweek on what’s often missing from debates about social media and mental health: gun violence. Patton lays out important considerations when bringing the topic of gun violence into this debate, including how to avoid over-policing or stigmatizing the involved youth who could benefit from mental health support.
Shoshana Aronowitz was featured in an article in the Inquirer about how the Parker Administration is approaching the opioid crisis. Aronowitz expressed concerns that people affected by the approach would not be able to access quality treatment.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have published the “Community Safety as a Social Determinant of Health” workshop proceedings and video highlights, which feature Research Core Director Terry Richmond and Community Action Board member Tyrique Glasgow.