Second Medical Summit on Firearm Injury Prevention Concludes With 47 Professional Organizations Ready to Tackle America’s Public Health Crisis
The second Medical Summit on Firearm Injury Prevention convened in Chicago to lay out its priorities for addressing America’s public health crisis.
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Firearm injury continues to plague our country and potential solutions remain a high-profile topic in the national debate. While gun control is clearly a polarizing issue, other approaches to this public health problem may allow us (and perhaps other academic medical organizations) to lead an effort to find a common ground so that progress can be made in addressing firearm violence. American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (ACS COT) leadership and the Injury Prevention Committee have spearheaded an effort to work together and improve the quality of the conversation around how best to reduce firearm injury.
Recommendations from the ACS COT FAST Workgroup Chicago Consensus I
Journal of the American College of Surgeons, February 2019 (Open Access)
The COT’s consensus-based approach to firearm injury: An introduction
Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, October 2017
Principal Investigators: Avery Nathens, MD, PhD, MPH, FACS, FRCPSC, and Deborah Kuhls, MD, FACS, FCCM
Co-Investigators: Fred Rivara, MD, MPH, and Ashley Hink, MD, MPH
The ACS COT was awarded a grant from the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research (NCGVR) to study individual and community level risk factors for all firearm injuries treated at TQIP centers. The study aims to understand the circumstances and risk factors of adult and pediatric firearm injuries to identify potential future prevention interventions, and to develop national estimates on the incidence of firearm injuries in the US.
The ACS COT Firearm Study Research Dataset is being provided to researchers and investigators for further research projects using the data collected from this study. It is comprised of 17,395 firearm patients presenting at 128 participating TQIP centers between March 1, 2021, and February 28, 2022. Participating centers had to participate in ACS TQIP over the duration of the study and agreed to collect additional information on firearm injury patients, as defined in the ACS COT Firearm Data Dictionary.
While the study team had access to additional data, those data were collected as a part of routine data collection to support participation in the Trauma Quality Programs of the ACS, and the contractual agreements covering the collection of those data do not permit them to be disclosed in this dataset. Similarly, we’re not able to provide data derived from linkages to external datasets (e.g., the Distressed Community Index) as we are not permitted to distribute those datasets, nor are we able to provide the ZIP codes used for linkage as they’re considered PHI.
If you would like to use the ACS COT Firearm Study Research Dataset for your analyses, you must first complete our online dataset application. ACS Staff will review your application and follow-up via email within 15 business days after your submission.
The Firearm Safety and Patient Health: A Proactive Guide to Protecting Patients and Their Families document from the ACS COT is a Best Practices guide developed for health care providers by firearm-owning surgeons, and intends to help link firearm injury prevention to clinical practice in a practical way. This guide provides information on firearm safety and handling, positive ways in which providers can discuss firearm safety with their patients, and various injury prevention resources which can be utilized by hospitals or the local community.
Firearm Safety and Patient Health: A Proactive Guide to Protecting Patients and Their Families
The Gun Safety and Your Health brochure from the ACS COT is intended for patients and the general public, and offers tips on how you can keep your families and communities safe from firearm injuries and death. Our hope is that all health care providers will make this brochure available to your patients as an opportunity to engage them in discussions around firearm injury prevention and safety.
Gun Safety and Your Health (online viewing)
Providers are encouraged to download our press-quality versions and use a printing service to disseminate hard copies of this brochure.
Press-Quality Files for Print
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Fill out our form to download the brochure version that allows you to brand with your own logo.
A group from the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma’s (ACS COT) Injury Prevention and Control Committee was tasked with outlining a comprehensive approach to institute a sustainable hospital-based violence intervention program (HVIP). Below is a step-wise guide to establishing a working HVIP. It describes what is necessary to run a program at minimum, and is followed by an additional piece on resources for a “dream” program. It is intended to guide fledgling programs and perhaps save new programs from the pitfalls that often accompany this difficult work.
A group from the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma’s (ACS COT) Injury Prevention and Control Committee was tasked with outlining a comprehensive approach to institute a sustainable hospital-based violence intervention program (HVIP). Below is a step-wise guide to establishing a working HVIP. It describes what is necessary to run a program at minimum, and is followed by an additional piece on resources for a “dream” program. It is intended to guide fledgling programs and perhaps save new programs from the pitfalls that often accompany this difficult work.
HVIP Primer
HVIP Primer (abbreviated version)
Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, October 2017
HVIP Slideset Template—Gather support from your stakeholders
Organ Fellowship recipient reports on HVIP best practices
Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, October 2017
