Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
Community implications for gun violence prevention during co-occurring pandemics; a qualitative and computational analysis study.
This study provides insight into New York City residents' perceptions about violence after the outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) based on information from communities in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings. In this novel analysis, we used focus group and social media data to confirm or reject findings from qualitative interviews. We first used data from 69 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with low-income residents and community stakeholders to further explore how violence impacts New York City's low-income residents of color, as well as the role of city government in providing tangible support for violence prevention during co-occurring health (COVID-19) and social (anti-Black racism) pandemics. ⋯ In order to assess the degree to which the themes discovered in our qualitative interviews were shared by the broader community, we developed an integrative community data science study which leveraged natural language processing and computer vision techniques to study text and images on public social media data of 12 million tweets generated by residents. We joined computational methods with qualitative analysis through a social work lens and design justice principles to most accurately and holistically analyze the community perceptions of gun violence issues and potential prevention strategies. Findings indicate valuable community-based insights that elucidate how the co-occurring pandemics impact residents' experiences of gun violence and provide important implications for gun violence prevention in a digital era.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
The experience of secondary traumatic stress among community violence interventionists in Chicago.
Community violence intervention strategies are rising in prominence as promising alternatives to traditional criminal justice responses to gun violence. Although such approaches may offer policy advantages and yield societal benefits, the costs to the practitioners of this work-owing to the intimate proximity to violence required by the job-have generally been overlooked. ⋯ Our analysis further showed that the STS responses of interventionists were impacted by on-the-job traumatic experiences, particularly the death of a client. These results offer an important first systematic analysis of the trauma and mental health risks associated with community violence intervention practice and suggest that policymakers and practitioners should monitor and address worker risk of traumatic stress within this important public health profession.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2022
Psychosocial aspects of coping that predict post-traumatic stress disorder for African American survivors of homicide victims.
African Americans disproportionately experience homicide, and the psychological consequence of experiencing this traumatic event interferes with daily function, often in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to the Model of Coping for African American Survivors of Homicide Victims (MCAASHV), African Americans coping with the traumatic impact of homicide are influenced by: the violent nature of the death itself, racial- and cultural-bound experiences (e.g., cultural trauma, the culture of homicide including stigma, blame, shame, and lack of justice) and psychological processes including racial appraisal and coping strategies (e.g., spiritual, collective, meaning making). This study examined the direct and indirect effects racial- and cultural-bound experiences have on PTSD through coping strategies among 304 African American survivors of homicide victims across the United States using Qualtrics Panel collected in March-May 2018. ⋯ Coping (β = -0.38, p < .001) and culture of homicide (β = -0.27, p < .001) were negatively related to PTSD. Cultural trauma (β = 0.11, p < .014), culture of homicide (β = 0.43, p < .001), reactions to homicide (β = 0.11, p < .006) and racial appraisal (β = 0.32, p < .001) were positively associated with coping (R2 = 52%), and all were indirectly associated with PTSD through coping. Findings provide strong support for the MCAASHV and highlight the direct and indirect effects of racial and cultural experiences of coping that explain PTSD among African Americans chronically exposed to homicide.
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Interpersonal firearm injuries pose a persistent public health threat in the United States (US). Strategic interventions to curb these injuries require evaluation of measurable outcomes that prove effectiveness and substantiate efforts for wider scaling and implementation. ⋯ In this commentary we urge that the term which can insinuate racialized criminality and reinforce stigma, no longer be used to describe people who experience firearm injuries. We also advocate for reconsideration of 'recidivism' as an ideal evaluation metric for the success of tertiary firearm injury prevention programs.
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Gun violence is frequently described in the language of epidemics. Yet, few quantitative studies have generated convincing evidence on the most basic question underlying the epidemic model of violence: Does violence at time t beget violence at time t + 1? With a sample of 98 of the 100 largest U. S. cities from 2014 to 2020, we employ an instrumental variable approach developed in (Jacob et al., 2007) that uses weather conditions in a given week to instrument for shootings in the same week. ⋯ However, in years when cities went through sharp increases in gun violence, the prevalence of shootings in a given week has a strong, positive, causal effect on shootings in the following week. These results suggest that the relationship between current and subsequent violence is not static, but varies across different places and time periods. The results have implications for understanding how violence builds on itself during periods of sharp change.