Mapping the Progress of AHE’s Gun Violence Prevention Grants Program
In the Fall of 2023, Accelerate Health Equity (AHE) awarded four grants to Philadelphia-based health systems as part of its inaugural grants program to support innovative projects focused on the efficacy, outcomes, and scalability of health-system interventions to prevent gun violence. In the first year of the program, we are proud to share that each health system has made great strides in its research, with some even expanding its work to achieve maximum impact for our city.
Each team set out with a key focus and niche innovation to help reduce gun violence and its traumatic effects on Philadelphians. Our grantees have reported that stakeholders from across various sectors — including government officials, medical research centers, and documentarians — have expressed interest in their critical work.
AHE is incredibly proud of the work these teams have accomplished thus far and are eager to see the future of each project. Here’s an update on the status of each initiative across the four participating institutions:
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, pediatric firearm injuries doubled in 2020 and 2021. The Violence Interruption Program (VIP) at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) saw over 20% of program clients since 2020 experience firearm injuries, a substantial increase from prior years. While CHOP’s VIP program acknowledges that social and structural factors influence violence and well-being, the extent of this relationship is not well understood. CHOP is utilizing neighborhood-level data to analyze how socioeconomic factors impact both rates of injury and recovery from injury throughout Philadelphia
Over the past several months, the team has completed a structured review of available community-level data sources and developed a data dictionary including the Child Opportunity Index (COI), the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), and the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (Justice40). The team has cleaned these data and has conducted preliminary spatial analyses of the data sources.
Next, CHOP plans to fully integrate their community-level data with individual-level patient data. This integration will allow CHOP to locate communities with the greatest burden of injury and identify community-level characteristics associated with injury and recovery. These findings can be used to design, implement, and evaluate interventions that address pediatric violent injury.
Jefferson Health
Gun locks are an inexpensive and effective method of improving firearm storage safety to reduce injury — however, there is little evidence about the use of safe storage after gun lock distribution among urban populations. The initiative focuses on distributing gun locks and safe gun ownership educational materials to communities upon completion of a prostate screening utilizing a mobile cancer screening van.
After formalizing its partnership with the Mobile Van Screening program, working with Jefferson College of Population Health to develop the initial script and logic model, and recruiting student volunteers, Jefferson Health launched its field work in September. It was a key component of the initiative that it build a diverse and sustainable pool of staff to help facilitate this intervention during screening events. To that end, the Jefferson Health team has onboarded two major student organizations to help provide staffing and have begun recruiting MPH students as team members.
In addition, Jefferson Health's gun lock distribution program has received interest from Federal policy makers.
Penn Medicine
In an effort to address accidental and preventable firearm deaths, Penn Medicine has developed Emergency Department-based interventions to promote safe firearm storage in partnership with the hospital security officers. The Penn Medicine team has successfully completed the qualitative evaluation that confirmed the acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of the program in the Emergency Department setting and has also launched an anonymous survey to ask participants about firearm storage preferences and usage of Penn storage devices.
Additionally, the team has completed an NIH R01 research submission for their work under the AHE grant and is working to scale their intervention to other health systems. Not only that, but recipients of the AHE grant at Penn Medicine are now partnering with the PA Health Professionals to End Gun Violence — a new coalition of clinicians and health experts striving to prevent firearm-related injuries and deaths — to expand their hospital-based gun violence prevention initiative for broader reach and impact. This expanded initiative will distribute gun locks and information on secure firearm storage at pop-up events in Philadelphia to help make our community safer.