GunsFirearm deaths, injuries among children
Nearly 28,000 American children and teens have died because of firearms in the past decade – second only to the 44,800 who died in motor vehicle collisions. But while the number of young people who die each year from car and truck crashes has fallen, it’s stayed about the same for guns.
Nearly 28,000 American children and teens have died because of firearms in the past decade – second only to the 44,800 who died in motor vehicle collisions.
But while the number of young people who die each year from car and truck crashes has fallen, it’s stayed about the same for guns.
A new website aims to change that by helping researchers, health care providers and others tackle the prevention of youth firearm injuries as a public health issue.
U-M says that the site, www.childfirearmsafety.org, aims to share what’s known – and what experts still need to find out – about guns and people under age 19. The site offers free access to a trove of data on the issue, as well as training for health care providers and others.
It’s the first product of a federally funded national effort called FACTS, for Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens.
Based at the University of Michigan, with more than two dozen researchers from 12 universities and health systems, FACTS aims to fill a knowledge gap about firearms and young people, and make up for a ‘lost generation’ of research on the issue. The effort is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health.
That knowledge lags far behind what we know about other top causes of death, disease and injury among children and teens, says Rebecca Cunningham, co-leader of FACTS and an emergency physician and associate vice president for research at U-M.
“Despite the death toll, research on the leading cause of death for young people gets at least 450 times more federal funding than research on firearms, the second-leading cause of death,” says Cunningham.
