Few societal systems have as many touch points with an individual as health care does. Each touch point has the potential to serve as an intervention to help prevent firearm injury.
By viewing firearm injury as a public health and preventative health issue, and reacting to it as such, hospitals and health systems have the ability to confront it in the same systematic and rigorous way that other large-scale public health problems have been confronted in the past.
Read a new #NAMPerspectives commentary that explores the potential benefits of researching and treating firearm injury in the same ways we do heart disease and cancer: https://doi.org/10.31478/201904c
This commentary was originally published in NAM Perspectives by the National Academy of Medicine, Washington, DC., available online at: https://doi.org/10.31478/201904c. It is reprinted here by prior agreement.
Download the full proceedings of the Workshop “Health Systems Interventions to Prevent Firearm Injuries and Death” at: https://www.nap.edu/resource/25354/interactive.