Armed violence making the headlines while CDC prevention programs reduce

On Wednesday, two violent acts – the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the shooting of two secondary students in Colorado – crystallize the threat that armed violence poses to public health. However, the Trump administration has just closed its greatest programs devoted to the prevention of this violence.

For decades, centers for Disease Control and Prevention led to public health research and initiatives on the cause, persistence and prevention of violence with weapons. The reductions in budgets and workforce launched the CDC injury prevention center, with funded and then renewed funding, power reductions in break then made last month.

Experts say that in the absence of CDC’s expertise and support for local public health initiatives, the messaging of government agencies on armed violence, including the Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is stifled and confusing.

“It is a cruel irony that only a few days after an armed man sprayed more than 500 balls on the CDC campus, the government dismissed more than 150 specialists in the prevention of violence and injuries to the CDC,” said Tom Simon, who until his retirement in April was the director of scientific programs in the Division of the Prevention of the Center for the Center in Chust. “These are researchers and practitioners with unique expertise in prevention of violence that does not exist elsewhere in the federal government.”

All employees of three of the four branches in the violence prevention division were dismissed, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Services confirmed on Friday, including the entire program and research staff. Simon told Stat that their withdrawal and the proposed budget reduces the support of the prevention of violence by the CDC across the country, including the translation of data and research on practice.

Kennedy’s views

The day before deaths by firearm in Utah and Colorado, Kennedy presented a theory on school fire. Asked in a briefing why armed violence was not included in the Make Our Children Healthy Again strategy report, he retraced such violence in the 1990s and, without citing evidence, listed possible causes. In August, he had linked antidepressants to a shooter from the Minnesota school.

“There are many, many things that happened in the 1990s that could explain them. One is dependence on psychiatric drugs, which in our country is unlike any other country in the world,” he said, echoing his suspicion of drugs such as SSRIs for mood disorders. “There could be links with video games, social media, a certain number of things, and we examine this at the NIH. So we are studying now, or initiating studies on correlation and the link, the potential link between the excess of our children and this violence and these other possible confused.”

Simon, who directed the research portfolio on CDC firearms and contributed to the advice of the first general surgeon on weapon violence, rejected.

“There is no evidence of a causal link between SSRIs and mass fire,” he said. “We have to be careful not to hurt. The SSRIs help millions of people. There is already too much stigmatization about mental health care and we must be careful not to contribute to it. ”

Sharon Gilmartin, director general of Safe Streets Alliance, closely looked at the prevention of injuries of the CDC. Looking at the Maha report on children, she considers programs to prevent violence as vulnerable, despite the language on the contrary.

“There were so many elements that directly support the prevention work that occurs, from the CDC injury center and certainly things around mental health and the consumption of substances,” she said. “It is confusing that we saw the funding deleted, but it is explicitly called as a priority of the administration.”

About 80% of CDC financing circulates towards public and local health services, where the prevention of violence meets the street. “People love the work of these programs in their community,” Gilmartin told Stat. “They simply have no idea that the source of funding is the federal government.”

During the Tuesday briefing, Kennedy also called on the property of firearms in the United States and Switzerland, the statistics that are unleashed (in the United States, 42% of households had a firearm against 28% of households in Switzerland) and not mentioning stronger Swiss laws on obtaining, storage and transport of firearms.

The former CDC official Simon urged the action to stop the spread of false declarations. “Disinformation and lies have contributed to filming on the CDC campus,” he said. “What is missing is an open exchange of ideas and actions to prevent people in crisis from accessing a firearm. This is where we have to act. ”

Teasing what works

In addition to studying the factors that could give young people down to violence, the injury prevention center examined armed violence at the individual and community level. Examples of recent research that may not be possible now include a study that has examined the risk of suicide among army soldiers and veterans. Another has analyzed data from two cities to see how individual, family and neighborhood risk factors for armed violence could predict the use of subsequent weapons by young people. Another has still watched access to firearms, the consumption of opioids and suicide using a pistol.

Previous research has concluded that earning income tax credits can reduce violent crimes by around 10%, so affordable housing tests and childcare subsidies to mitigate financial stressors have also drawn the attention of research.

Last year, CDC researchers reported a pilot study in Atlanta of what is called the Cardiff model, an intervention of violence in hospital using the application of the law and hospital data to say where violent injuries came from. There is now a toolbox for communities to use and a network to join.

Before Debra Houry became chief of the medical CDC, then one of the four senior CDC officials who resigned after the eviction of CDC director Susan Monarez, she was director of the National Center for Bleshing Prevention and Control. In 2022, she thought about the growth of deaths and disparities in firearms.

“Public health cannot do this alone. No one can do it alone,” she said. “This certainly requires the application of the law, education systems, parents, religious communities. The power of these complete strategies is that it requires all these strategies. ”

Simon and Gilmartin both named another tool: safe storage. Gilmartin called him one of the most bipartisan mechanisms of injury prevention and violence because everyone may agree that there are people who should not have access to firearms. This includes the support of the firearms industry, said Simon.

If families have someone who is in crisis – in danger of harming themselves or others – household members can voluntarily and temporarily store firearm outside the house. Gun Storage MAP.com offers postal code storage options for firearms owners, for example.

Other actions listed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions include stronger license requirements, orders for protection against domestic violence, laws on the transportation of firearms in public and community programs focused on the most at risk of being a victim or of committing an act of armed violence.

CDC shots last month and this week’s attacks can stand out as unusual, but armed violence occurs every day. This should not be like this, Simon believes.

In all types of violence and suicide, there are dozens of opportunities to intervene long before the incident occurred, he said. “We have to invest in the cessation of violence before it happens. Prevention of violence works. “

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