Building Research Capacity for Firearm Safety Among Children

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Among U.S. children, firearm-related fatalities are the 2nd leading cause of death and include the unintentional, accidental discharge of a firearm by a toddler with a playmate, the use of a firearm to self-inflict harm by a suicidal teen, and the escalation of bullying or dating violence to lethal means by an adolescent. Substantial disparities exist in firearm-related injuries, with African-American children disproportionally impacted by unintentional and assaultive firearm injury, and rural youth disproportionately dying of suicide by firearm. Childhood firearm injury rates have remained unchanged in the recent decades despite significant reductions in non-firearm fatal injuries due to an approach that includes improved epidemiologic data, behavior modifications, and technological solutions. In contrast, research funding and publications for firearm injury have lagged, leading to a current deficit of both established and developing researchers, as well as a lack of pilot work and literature needed to support large scale studies. A 2013 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report detailed the urgent need for novel and innovative research to address this deficit, however, was primarily focused on adult populations. This proposal builds on these IOM recommendations and utilizes multidisciplinary research expertise across the U.S., as well as stakeholder partner groups of gun owners, to catalyze the science of childhood firearm injury prevention with the overarching goal of reducing firearm injuries among children while also respecting gun ownership as an important part of the cultural fabric of US society. Our specific aims are: Aim #1: Create a multidisciplinary team of researchers and stakeholder partners to define a pediatric-specific firearm injury research agenda for the five workgroups; Aim #2: Stimulate novel firearm prevention research by having workgroups conduct pilot studies that address key research questions identified in Aim 1, to provide preliminary data that informs large-scale studies; Aim #3: Improve access to and use of national firearm data and ease future secondary analyses by: 1) Establishing a web-based searchable data archive for childhood firearm injury that is enabled with variable-level searching and cross-study comparisons; and, 2) Enhancing and improving pediatric firearm injury data collection in existing pediatric datasets such as the PECARN core data project and the PECARN registry database; Aim #4: Build a cadre of national research scholars with multidisciplinary training and expertise that will serve as an emerging pipeline for future research. Expected outcomes of this five-year grant will be to create six research resources: 1) consensus documents detailing the state of the science and key research questions for pediatric firearm injury prevention; 2) pilot data to support five large-scale research proposals; 3) a web-based data archive and searchable research repository on childhood firearm injury; 4) enhanced data collection opportunities on childhood firearm injuries through existing national networks (e.g., PECARN); 5) a cadre of new researchers (postdoctoral students) focused in this research area; and 6) a webinar series to inform researchers nationally in this topic area.