Update Course Rewind: Firearm Screening 2023

Firearm injuries are the leading cause of death for kids in the United States, though not necessarily the same around the world.

The Bullet Points project is a great source of information in Ohio for firearm counseling.

The AAP chapter in Ohio has a program called Store It Safe with materials that can be transferred into other institutions.

Cincinnati Children's Hospital started a firearm related injury task force to address the problem in community, focusing on both safety and education, suicide prevention, and community level violence prevention.

School shootings are a tiny percentage of pediatric firearm injuries.

According to the American College of Surgeons non-fatal firearm study, 50-60% of pediatric firearm injuries are assault related, with many being bystander injuries.

About 30% of pediatric firearm injuries are unintentional, involving kids playing with firearms or engaging with them at home because they're not safely stored.

The remaining pediatric firearm injuries after assault and unintentional are self-inflicted.

The rural-urban divide in pediatric firearm injuries is very different: rural populations are much more likely to see self-inflicted injuries in both adults and kids, while urban populations see assaults as the predominant source.

One size doesn't fit all for all communities in terms of reducing firearm injury; interventions must address both safety and community violence drivers like poverty and economic opportunity.

The biggest driver of community level violence is poverty and economic opportunity.

Pediatric colleagues in Cincinnati, Matt Zaf and Joe Real, are doing virtual reality counseling and screening for firearm safety.

VR counseling is a strategy to help people become comfortable with firearm safety conversations in a virtual reality way, and this work will continue to develop and grow.

The data on pediatric firearm injuries is poor, with huge amounts of missingness in terms of location, weapon type, and relationship to shooter.

Papers from the ACS firearm study will show that we don't collect data very well on pediatric firearm injuries, including whether incidents happened at school, proximity to home, weapon type, and relationship to the shooter.

Firearm injury prevention can't be done effectively on a national basis alone; local environments differ significantly and require tailored interventions.