Police violence and police-related deaths have dominated news reports in the U.S. over the last year. Now, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are arguing data on these deaths should be made as available as data on other public health issues.
The researchers laid out their case in an essay published in the journal PLOS Medicine.
"Although deaths of police officers are well-documented, no reliable official U.S. data exist on the number of persons killed by the police, in part because of long-standing and well-documented resistance of police departments to making these data public," wrote the researchers.
They make the argument that because these events result in deaths and affect the well-being of families and communities, the data regarding law enforcement-related deaths constitute public health, not just criminal justice.
"We propose that law enforcement-related deaths be treated as a notifiable condition, which would allow public health departments to report these data in real-time, at the local as well as national level, thereby providing data needed to understand and prevent the problem," concluded the researchers.
Already, some healthcare organizations are using this kind of data as part of their population health efforts. For instance, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago created Strengthening Chicago's Youth to address the violence that plagues the community. SCY promotes data-driven approaches to prevent violence through multi-sector collaboration, modeled on the approach Lurie Children's takes to issues such as childhood obesity and injury prevention.
"Law enforcement involvement is critical in preventing violence, but pervasive mistrust between police and community residents limits their ability to be effective collaborators," Rebecca Levin, director of SCY, told Becker's Hospital Review. "SCY recommends that police-related deaths be addressed using the same public health approach we apply to all forms of violence — use data to better understand the problem, examine the underlying factors that contribute to the problem, develop and test interventions, and assure widespread adoption through policy and systems change."
This story was updated at 2:00 p.m. CST to include Ms. Levin's comment on police-related deaths and SCY.
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