Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
Community implications for gun violence prevention during co-occurring pandemics; a qualitative and computational analysis study.
This study provides insight into New York City residents' perceptions about violence after the outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) based on information from communities in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings. In this novel analysis, we used focus group and social media data to confirm or reject findings from qualitative interviews. We first used data from 69 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with low-income residents and community stakeholders to further explore how violence impacts New York City's low-income residents of color, as well as the role of city government in providing tangible support for violence prevention during co-occurring health (COVID-19) and social (anti-Black racism) pandemics. ⋯ In order to assess the degree to which the themes discovered in our qualitative interviews were shared by the broader community, we developed an integrative community data science study which leveraged natural language processing and computer vision techniques to study text and images on public social media data of 12 million tweets generated by residents. We joined computational methods with qualitative analysis through a social work lens and design justice principles to most accurately and holistically analyze the community perceptions of gun violence issues and potential prevention strategies. Findings indicate valuable community-based insights that elucidate how the co-occurring pandemics impact residents' experiences of gun violence and provide important implications for gun violence prevention in a digital era.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
The experience of secondary traumatic stress among community violence interventionists in Chicago.
Community violence intervention strategies are rising in prominence as promising alternatives to traditional criminal justice responses to gun violence. Although such approaches may offer policy advantages and yield societal benefits, the costs to the practitioners of this work-owing to the intimate proximity to violence required by the job-have generally been overlooked. ⋯ Our analysis further showed that the STS responses of interventionists were impacted by on-the-job traumatic experiences, particularly the death of a client. These results offer an important first systematic analysis of the trauma and mental health risks associated with community violence intervention practice and suggest that policymakers and practitioners should monitor and address worker risk of traumatic stress within this important public health profession.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
Extreme risk protection orders, race/ethnicity, and equity: Evidence from California.
Extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs) provide a civil mechanism to temporarily remove firearm access from individuals at high risk of harming themselves or others. Evidence and theory suggest that ERPOs can prevent firearm-related harm, but the policy's impact on racial/ethnic equity is largely unknown. To examine potential inequities by race/ethnicity in public perceptions and use of California's ERPO law, we drew on two complementary data sources: 1) a 2020 state-representative survey of California adults, and 2) ERPO court documents for the first 3 years of policy implementation (2016-2018). ⋯ Similarly, review of ERPO court documents revealed that no family or household members served as petitioners for Black and Hispanic/Latinx ERPO respondents. Additionally, Black respondents were the least likely to have documented access to a firearm and legal representation in court. Racial/ethnic equity in ERPO use may be improved by reducing barriers to petitioning, incorporating non-law enforcement intervention professionals like behavioral health specialists into the ERPO process, providing legal assistance to respondents and petitioners, and investing in the social safety net.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
Effect of flavored E-cigarette bans in the United States: What does the evidence show?
The United States federal government, along with many state and local governments, have passed restrictions on electronic cigarette ("e-cigarette") sales with the stated purpose of preventing youth use of these products. The justification for these restrictions includes the argument that youth e-cigarette use will re-normalize youth smoking, leading to increased rates of cigarette smoking by teenagers. However, in this paper, we propose an evidence-based version of this model based on several years' worth of longitudinal and econometric research, which suggests that youth e-cigarette use has instead worked to replace a culture of youth smoking. From this analysis, we propose a re-evaluation of current policies surrounding e-cigarette sales so that declines in e-cigarette use will not come at the cost of increasing cigarette use among youth and adults.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
Examining risky firearm behaviors among high-risk gun carriers in New York City.
Precarious firearm conduct among inexperienced gun possessors has the potential to intensify firearm-related fatalities and injuries. The current study involves face-to-face interviews with 51 high-risk (and prohibited) residents of Brooklyn and the Bronx, NY, each of whom have either been shot or shot at. We analyze study participants' lived experiences regarding urban gun violence (including as victims and perpetrators), firearm handling, sharing, and improper storage. ⋯ These informal methods were shaped by respondents' desire to arm themselves despite inadequate access to firearm training. Study participants also described routinely stashing firearms in unsecure, easily accessible locations. Our study findings have important implications for informing community-based harm reduction and safety strategies among persons within high-risk networks.