Reducing Firearm Violence: A Public Health Approach
David Hemenway, Ph.D.
Professor of Health Policy, is Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.
Harvard T.H. Chan, School of Public Health
David Hemenway, Ph.D., Professor of Health Policy, is Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He formerly spent a week each year at the University of Vermont as a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large. (external link)
Dr. Hemenway teaches classes on injury and on economics. At HSPH he has won ten teaching awards as well as the inaugural community engagement award.
Dr. Hemenway has written widely on injury prevention, including articles on firearms, violence, suicide, child abuse, motor vehicle crashes, fires, falls and fractures. He headed the pilot for the National Violent Death Reporting System, which provides detailed and comparable information on suicide and homicide. In 2012 he was recognized by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention as one of the “twenty most influential injury and violence professionals over the past twenty years.”
In articles on insurance, Dr. Hemenway described a general reason why low-risk individuals often buy insurance, and coined the term “propitious selection (PDF file).” Recent economic studies ; (PDF file)have focused on empirically determining which goods are more and less positional (e.g., bought largely to “keep up with the Joneses”). An early statistics article, Why Your Classes are Larger than Average (external link), has been anthologized in various mathematical collections.
Dr. Hemenway has written five books. Industrywide Voluntary Product Standards (external link) (1975) describes the role of voluntary standards and standardization in the U.S. economy. Monitoring and Compliance: the Political Economy of Inspection (external link) (1985) describes the importance of inspection processes in ensuring that regulations are followed, and the reasons the system often fails. Prices and Choices (external link) (3rd edition) (1993) is a collection of twenty-six of his original essays applying microeconomic theory to everyday life.
Private Guns Public Health (external link) (2006, 2017) describes the public health approach to reducing firearm violence, and summarizes the scientific studies on the firearms and health.
While You Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention (external link) (2009) describes more than sixty successes, and over thirty heroes who have made the world safer. This readable book helps answer the questions “What is public health?” and “What is the public health approach?” To read more about this ode to public health, click here (external link) for Dr. Hemenway’s book blog.
Summary
https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=51124 (external link)
The lecture will describe the enormity of the US gun violence problem and the public health approach for reducing that problem. It will illustrate the public health approach, including emphasizing the importance of data and research, with examples of ways to reduce suicide and unintentional firearm deaths.
Presentation Objectives:
- To enable the audience to understand the public health approach (to reducing firearm violence)
- To enable the audience to understand how reducing access to lethal means during at-risk periods can dramatically reduce suicide.
This page was last updated on Saturday, December 2, 2023