Your Local Epidemiologist: Violence

Yes, gun violence is a public health issue

Katelyn Jetelina — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 13:15:20 GMT

Earlier this week, the U.S. Surgeon General declared gun violence a public health crisis. Many narratives immediately pushed back that this isn’t public health’s lane.

Let me say this loud and clear: Gun violence is absolutely in the purview of public health. And until society accepts it as such, we will continue to lose tens of thousands of Americans a…

Mass shootings’ cascading impact

Katelyn Jetelina — Tue, 23 May 2023 12:43:25 GMT

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the Uvalde mass shooting. Nineteen fourth graders and two teachers at an elementary school were murdered. As a mom, a Texas resident (at the time), and a public health professional, this shook me. Mass shootings continue to shake me.

Gun advocates claim that the probability of dying from a mass shooting is rare. A…

Texas, guns, and stats

Katelyn Jetelina — Mon, 08 May 2023 13:09:58 GMT

Public health touches all aspects of our lives, not just during a pandemic and not just with infectious diseases. Thanks to your feedback, this newsletter will continue with COVID updates and address other public health topics, too. To choose what topics land in your inbox, click HERE.

Bullets and children. And what to do about it.

Katelyn Jetelina — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 11:01:09 GMT

Active shooter drills: Do risks outweigh benefits?

Katelyn Jetelina — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 12:00:32 GMT

School policies for gun violence are a band-aid for a bullet hole. We need to prevent gun violence upstream. Prevent it from even being a conversation. But, this is where we find ourselves as parents today. So, here we go.

Yet another school mass shooting

Katelyn Jetelina — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 12:04:42 GMT

Public health touches on all aspects of our lives, not just during a pandemic and not just with infectious diseases. Thanks to your feedback, this newsletter will continue with COVID updates but touches on other public health topics, too. To choose what topics land in your inbox, click HERE.

Firearms: What you can do right now

Katelyn Jetelina — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 01:45:09 GMT

We need solutions for firearm morbidity and mortality in the U.S. Firearm violence is a leading cause of premature death in the U.S. and the leading cause of death overall among kids, recently surpassing car crashes, cancer, and drug overdoses. We need to and we want to do things. But it’s not clear how.

We are all familiar by now with the swiss chees…

It’s hard to explain (and fix) evil

Katelyn Jetelina — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 12:00:45 GMT

In the aftermath of mass violence and the furor of the 24-hour news cycle, the words “mental illness” are often used to try to explain a perpetrator’s actions. In many cases, the assumption that mental illness had to be involved in these incidents drives the public debate about solutions.

This kind of coverage might raise awareness of how important men…

We can reduce gun violence in the U.S.

Katelyn Jetelina — Fri, 27 May 2022 19:07:49 GMT

I was going to wait until next week to start writing about firearm violence. During the day, I’m a violence epidemiologist so have some perspectives to share. But this week has been a lot. People need time to grieve, to react, and to process, so I was going to allow space for that. But I’m starting to see dangerous rhetoric bubble to the surface: We can…

Epidemiology of Mass Shootings

Katelyn Jetelina — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 19:12:15 GMT

Public health touches on all aspects of our lives, not just during a pandemic and not just with infectious diseases. Thanks to your feedback, this newsletter will continue with COVID updates but will start touching on other epidemiological topics, too. For example, violence epidemiology (where my research “lives” during the day). If you would only like …

Mass shootings are predictable.

Katelyn Jetelina — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:33:40 GMT

Violence is predictable. And, if it’s predictable, it’s preventable.

For those of you that don’t know, I’m a violence epidemiologist “during the day”. Our theory is that violence is contagious. We’ve shown time and time again, that clusters of violence mirror clusters of infectious disease. This means that violence is not random, its predictable. And if …

COVID19 and child abuse

YLE — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 20:41:40 GMT

Thought I would sprinkle some of my own research in this blog because…why not?

For those of you that don’t know, I am a violence and injury epidemiologist. My research lab focuses on how violence is contagious (just like infectious diseases) and predictable. Because if it's predictable, then it’s preventable.

As we ALL know by now, COVID19 has not only ca…