GVPanorama: Harnessing the Power of Health Data to Combat Gun Violence
Understanding the scope of our gun violence epidemic remains limited due to inadequate data infrastructure
Getting accurate and up-to-date health care information regarding gun violence can be a Herculean task.
Even after the Surgeon General declared gun violence an epidemic last year, a large portion of our Federal and local governments won’t even acknowledge it’s a public health problem. Pro-gun politicians have continually created impediments to data dissemination about gun violence, and usually frame it as a mental health issue as a ruse to pass the buck once again. Having a gun lobby-supported conspiracy theorist sworn in as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services isn’t likely to help the situation.
Nevertheless — as this recent, comprehensive article from Health Affairs explains — we must continue to support the creation of an integrated, modernized data infrastructure to help combat this uniquely American epidemic.
“Firearms data are particularly difficult to access, take years to process and become available, and are often very limited in scope and lack integration with other sources that may broaden that scope.”
Check out the full article here.
Photo by Luis F Rodríguez Jiménez; via Pexels.
The lack of accurate data, particularly the most basic like that number o deaths by firearm in a year and the number of privately owned firearms makes formulating or evaluating reduction ideas difficult. It also makes meaningful discussion and debate difficult as each side is using its own data and definitions. Coming up with a common set of definitions is also needed. For example, depending on the age range used the leading cause of death of children changes, if 18,19 and 20 year olds are included its guns, if they are not included it is swimming pools.