The alliance offers technical assistance and training to hospital-linked violence intervention programs. In 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that allowed states to use Medicaid funds for violence prevention. Several states, including California, New York and Colorado, passed legislation to do just that. In 2022, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act set aside $1.4 billion in funding for a variety of violence prevention programs through next year. But in early February, President Trump ordered the attorney general to conduct a 30-day review of a number of Biden’s policies on gun violence and has frozen a large number of federal grants. This has left many hospital violence prevention programs worried about their ability to survive.
Many of these programs rely on grants to fund their efforts. These programs connect a violence prevention professional with gun-violence patients and their families. Workers uncover the social and economic factors that contribute to gun violence and help families and patients reduce those risk factors upon discharge.
One such program in San Francisco reported a fourfold reduction in violent injury recidivism rates over six years.
Federal data showed that gun violence is the leading cause of death among children and young adults and is tied to more than 48,000 deaths among people of all ages in 2022. These violent injuries put the victim at higher risk of future violence and risk of death.
However, the ED is an ideal setting to intervene in gun violence. Fatimah Dreier, executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education, drew a specific comparison between healthcare’s efforts to prevent the spread of gun violence and the work it does to prevent disease, according to CBS.
Changing the social determinants of health that contributed to violence can include helping patients return to school or work, finding housing, attending court proceedings and assisting with transportation to healthcare appointments.