By Ellen Rome, MD, MPH, Special to Everyday Health,
Published Oct 9, 2015
http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/hear-me-out/gun-violence-public-health-crisis-america-is-denying/
Remember the Ebola panic of 2014? The fear and upheaval? The media saturation? The stop-it-by-any-means attitude?
If we can mount that kind of response for a disease that was contracted by just two people in the United States, imagine what would happen if a public health crisis began killing 30,000 Americans a year, including 3,000 children.
Unfortunately, we don’t have to imagine this. Gun violence kills that many Americans annually, while wounding 73,000 more. Sadly, response from lawmakers is the polar opposite of the Ebola response.
This has to change.
Gun violence is a public health issue that profoundly affects children and families. Firearm injuries are among the top three killers of kids.
As a pediatrician, I have a duty to protect children. And the data is clear: strong gun laws positively impact families and lower accidental gun deaths, homicides, and suicides in youth.
I firmly support the American Academy of Pediatrics’ stance that Congress needs to find a way forward on gun safety legislation that improves the background-check system (including the elimination of gun show loopholes), reduces gun trafficking, requires safe firearm storage, bans all high-capacity magazines, passes stronger handgun regulations, enacts a strong, effective ban on assault weapons, and supports research to generate effective approaches to prevention and healing.
Here’s a closer look at the priorities the American Academy of Pediatrics is advocating:
- Firearm safety: Enact stronger gun laws, including an effective assault weapons ban; mandatory background checks on all firearm purchases; and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
- Prevention and public health: Allow federal agencies to conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence, and stand by the president’s clarification that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors from asking their patients about guns in the home.
- Access to mental health services: Improve the identification of mental illnesses through increased screening, addressing inadequate insurance coverage and high out-of-pocket costs that create barriers to access, strengthening the overall quality of mental health access, and expanding the Medicaid reimbursement policy to include mental health and developmental services.
- Reducing gun violence in the media and educating children: Develop quality, violence-free programming and constructive dialogue among child health and education advocates, the Federal Communications Commission, and the television and motion picture industries, as well as toy, video game, and other software manufactures and designers, to reduce the romanticization of guns in the popular media as a means of resolving conflict.
I saw a young man in my office with bullet wounds skimming his legs. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time — an increasingly common occurrence here in Cleveland. In the past month, three children have been killed in separate Cleveland shootings: A 3-year-old boy and a 5-month-old girl were shot and killed while sitting in cars on the city’s East Side, and a 5-year-old boy was shot and killed while playing football outside his grandmother’s home.
These incidents — as well as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut; the Umpqua Community College shooting in Roseburg, Oregon; and all the other places that have become synonymous with deadly shootings — are preventable.
A public health approach can help.
Consider automobile safety. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, traffic fatalities were as high as they had been since cars went into mass production, with about 52,000 deaths per year, or 25 to 26 deaths per 100,000 people.
A litany of common-sense laws, regulations, and safety campaigns were put in place over the next several decades, including speed limits, seat belt laws, air bag regulations, better highway design, baby seat and child seat laws, and drunk driving laws. Societal pressure also had a big impact. By 2013, the death rate had dropped 61 percent, to 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people.
Picture our roads and highways today without speed limits, seat belts, or child safety seats. It’s unthinkable. In fact, after initially fighting increased safety measures as too expensive, the auto industry has made safety a selling point, adding more air bags and technology that alerts drivers when they’re out of their lanes, and even brings the car to a stop to avoid collisions.
How does this apply to guns? It shows that safety improvements can be made through common-sense tactics, and that it’s possible for a resistant industry to embrace safety changes — and for a hesitant society to flip cultural norms.
It’s also important to consider that we didn’t ban cars to improve traffic safety. We didn’t ban alcohol to decrease incidence of drunk driving. Instead, we implemented multi-faceted approaches through improved technology, law enforcement, and cultural pressure.
We cannot afford to be silent on gun violence. I strongly encourage action on this issue, with appropriate legislation passed, research supported, and families able to access bolstered mental health services to heal those who are already victims of schoolyard killings, drive-by shootings, or accidental gun-related injuries in the home. Call your congresspeople. Take action to help be the change we need.
I hope that we can all agree that reducing gun violence would be good for America. Certainly, there is no simple, overnight solution. It took the better part of four decades to improve traffic safety. Let’s hope it won’t take that long to improve gun safety.
Ellen Rome, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician at Cleveland Clinic and head of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Adolescent Medicine.Top photo credit: Getty Images
http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/hear-me-out/gun-violence-public-health-crisis-america-is-denying/
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