Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
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Widespread awareness of the recent deaths of several black males at the hands of police has revealed an unaddressed public health challenge-determining the root causes of excessive use of force by police applied to black males that may result in "justifiable homicides." The criminalization of black males has a long history in the USA, which has resulted in an increase in policing behaviors by legal authorities and created inequitable life chances for black males. Currently, the discipline of public health has not applied an intersectional approach that investigates the intersection of race and gender to understanding police behaviors that lead to "justifiable homicides" for black males. This article applies the core tenets and processes of Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) to develop a framework that can improve research and interventions to address the disparities observed in recent trend analyses of "justifiable homicides." Accordingly, we use PHCRP to offer an alternative framework on the social, legal, and health implications of violence-related incidents. We aim to move the literature in this area forward to help scholars, policymakers, and activists build the capacity of communities to address the excessive use of force by police to reduce mortality rates from "justifiable homicides."
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This paper examines an alternative solution for collecting reliable police shooting data. One alternative is the collection of police shooting data from hospital trauma units, specifically hospital-based violence intervention programs. These programs are situated in Level I trauma units in many major cities in USA. ⋯ Researchers working in hospital emergency departments are prohibited from recruited individuals under arrests. The trauma staff, particularly ED physicians and nurses, are in a strategic position to collect this kind of data. Thus, this paper examines how trauma units can serve as an alternative in the reliable collection of police shooting data.
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Housing instability has been shown to be related to poorer health outcomes in various studies, mainly in the USA and UK. Affected individuals are more prone to psychiatric (e.g., major depression, anxiety) and physical disorders (e.g., hypertension). This situation has deteriorated with the onset of the economic crisis. ⋯ In contrast, self-reported poor health was more prominent in later stages of foreclosure, such as in post-eviction without dation in payment stage in men (PRc = 2.24 [95 %CI = 1.35-3.72]). We observed a considerably higher prevalence of poor mental and self-reported health among male and female PAH members than in the general population. Public policies that tackle housing instability and its consequences are urgently needed in Spain.
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This paper explores theoretical, spatial, and mediatized pathways through which policing poses harms to the health of marginalized communities in the urban USA, including analysis of two recent and widely publicized incidents of officer-involved killings in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York. We examine the influence of the "broken windows" model in both policing and public health, revealing alternate institutional strategies for responding to urban disorder in the interests of the health and safety of the city. ⋯ We show how police killings reveal an underlying and racialized association between disorder and deviance that becomes institutionalized and embodied through spatial and symbolic pathways. If public health workers and advocates are to play a role in responding to the call of the Black Lives Matter movement, it is important to understand the interpretations and translations of urban social life that circulate on the streets, in the media, in public policy, and in institutional practice.