Firearms recently surpassed motor vehicles as the leading cause of death for kids and teens in the U.S., and were involved in a record 45,000 deaths nationwide in 2020. The current toll hearkens back to the days of rising automobile crash deaths, which spurred a national effort to use injury prevention science to make changes that cut automobile deaths in half — not by taking cars off the road, but rather by making our roads and their drivers safer.

Today, experts from the U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention are using the same strategy to understand and address firearm injuries and deaths. Through research, and partnerships with community leaders, they seek to make communities safer. Many are also front-line health care providers who have treated people with firearm injuries or risk factors for firearm violence or self-harm.

In this Well Aware, several of U-M’s top experts will discuss how we can best address this national crisis. Please submit questions for the Q&A session when you RSVP.

This virtual event will be hosted on Zoom. Please register at https://umich.formstack.com/forms/dec08_wellaware_rsvp to receive details about accessing the discussion the morning of the event.

Welcome:

Rebecca Cunningham, M.D.
William G. Barsan Collegiate Professor of Emergency Medicine
Vice President for Research, U-M Office of Research
Principal Investigator, Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens (FACTS)

Panelists:

Patrick Carter, M.D.
Co-Director, U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention
Co-Director, U-M Injury Prevention Center
Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and of Health Behavior and Health Education

Cynthia Ewell Foster, Ph.D.
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Douglas Wiebe, Ph.D.
Co-Director and Principal Investigator, U-M Injury Prevention Center
Professor of Emergency Medicine and of Epidemiology

Marc Zimmerman, Ph.D.
Marshall H. Becker Collegiate Professor of Public Health
Co-Director, U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention
Director, Michigan Youth Violence Prevention Center