Priorities in Recovering From a Lost Generation of Firearms Research

• Published in: American journal of public health (1971) 2018-07, Vol.108 (7), p.858-860
• Main Authors: Galea, Sandro, Branas, Charles C, Flescher, Andrew, Formica, Margaret K, Hennig, Nils, Liller, Karen D, Madanat, Hala N, Park, Andrew, Rosenthal, John E, Ying, Jun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aggression; AJPH Gun Violence Prevention; Automobiles; Careers; Cigarettes; Crises; Editorials; Firearm accidents & safety; Firearm laws & regulations; Firearms; Firearms - legislation & jurisprudence; Gun violence; Health care policy; Health Policy; Health research; Humans; Injuries; Injury/Emergency Care/Violence; Intellectuals; Mass murders; Medical research; Mortality; Motor vehicles; Other Statistics/Evaluation/Research; Panel data; Politics; Population studies; Prevention; Public Health; Registries; Research - economics; Research - legislation & jurisprudence; Research funding; Research Support as Topic; Sales; School violence; Shootings; Small arms; Smoking; Training; Trends; United States; Violence
• ISSN: 0090-0036; 1541-0048
• DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2018.304436

The year 2018 opened with 17 school shootings within the first 45 days of the year, including the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.2 The Parkland shooting resulted in unprecedented action, including some of the largest and most prominent gun dealers and retailers, such as Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart, voluntarily stopping the sales of assault weapons and increasing the age at which customers can buy certain firearms. Previous work has shown that, comparing research funding to burden of mortality, the consequences of firearms are among the least well-studied contributors to population health.4 The polarized politics of gun violence have prevented critical research on gun injuries and deaths that could help reduce this public health crisis, similar to what has proven so effective with other inherently dangerous consumer products such as automobiles and cigarettes. Population health research relies on funding to create training opportunities for junior researchers. Because of the lack of training program funding, and of senior researchers to sponsor junior researchers in the field, there is an enormous shortage of scholars- a lost generation-who might have committed themselves to studying this particularly challenging and large public health crisis from an early stage in their careers. [...]the figure does not account for the overall gradual increase in all publications over the past 20 years as biomedical research more broadly has expanded, largely influenced by an increase in federal funding for such research. [...]Figure 1b shows the same data as in panel a but using as a denominator the number ofarticles with the words "public health" in the title or abstract.