A case study on Data and Information Management Can Hospitals prevent Gun Violence ?

1. Can hospitals
prevent gun
violence?
Training in Thinking -Gun violence
A case study on Data and Information Management
Can hospitals prevent gun violence? This ‘universal screening’ study
will find out.
Doctors often ask patients about the health risks in their daily lives,
such as sugar intake or tobacco use. After all, doctors can use that
information to design better treatments. And on a larger scale, health
professionals can use anonymized medical data on substances like
sugar and tobacco to learn more about diseases like diabetes and lung
cancer. So, what if doctors began asking similar questions about guns,
which are involved in more than 100 deaths in the U.S. every day?
Could patients and researchers benefit in similar ways?

2. A new study from Northwell Health, the largest health system in
New York State, aims to find out. In the "We Ask Everyone. Firearm
Safety is a Health Issue" study, which began in September, doctors
will ask every patient who visits an emergency department at three
Northwell Health facilities about their access and exposure to
firearms, with questions like:
 Do you have a gun at home?
 Do you have access to guns outside your
home?
 Have you had a gun pulled on you over the
last six months?
The answers will become part of a large, anonymized data pool that
will help researchers better understand the underlying factors behind
gun violence. Northwell Health will also offer interventions to at-risk
patients. "This will be the first research study to universally screen all
patients who come into the emergency department for firearm access,
and gun violence risk, and then intervene as needed, with gun safety
counseling, gun locks, community resources, and medical referrals,"
said Dr. Chethan Sathya, director of Northwell's Center for Gun
Violence Prevention. "If you look at any other public health issue, it
starts with this universal type of approach."
Jayadeva de Silva for Humantalents International