* I have been suggesting for months that Chicago’s violence problem is a public health emergency. So, when Crain’s Chicago Business ran this op-ed by Karen Teitelbaum, the president and CEO of Sinai Health System in Chicago, I decided to share it all with you today…
About the numbers, there is no dispute. Deaths and injuries from gun violence in Chicago are our modern-day version of the plague. We have surpassed 300 homicides already this year, with 13 people killed by guns on Father’s Day alone. On the heels of another summer holiday, reports count 2,021 shooting victims so far this year, moving rapidly to overtake the 2,988 victims in all of 2015.
If we continue at this pace, we can expect to see 30,000 Chicagoans killed or wounded from gunshots in the next 10 years. Morbidity and mortality from such violence are two of the most dramatic examples of health disparities in our city, profoundly impacting communities of color.
Another vigil, moment of silence or chanting in the streets will not change this awful trajectory. We need answers that lead to solutions, and we need them now.
Answers that work—that provide real and sustainable change for the better—cannot come without research. Without the research that tells us the root causes of gun violence, how toddlers and children find guns in the house, why 60 percent of gun deaths are by suicide and what interventions can curb it, we are just guessing, feeling our way in the dark.
It is an outrage that Congress has specifically prohibited the Centers for Disease Control from funding gun violence research. Following the massacre in Orlando, the American Medical Association House of Delegates last month did the right thing and resolved to lobby Congress actively to overturn this policy.
We can hope for change in Congress, and we must support efforts to move policy, but last month’s Senate votes demonstrated once again how hard it will be to get that change. And with a presidential election looming large, it is unlikely major issues will be addressed until after January.
Chicago cannot wait. To find those answers, we have to come together as researchers, as funders, as leaders, as policy makers, as parents and as people who value life.
As Dr. Leslie Zun, the chairman of the Mount Sinai Hospital Emergency Department states, “We can save lives and continue patching people up who have been shot, but we would much rather be seeing less trauma and more ways to curb the escalating volume of violence that sends these critically wounded patients our way.”
If Chicago is rich in anything, it is rich in intellectual capital and civic commitment. We need to bring together those of us in Chicago who have the research expertise, experience and commitment to health care disparities to identify the causes and solutions to Chicago’s plague. We need to tap those in the streets who fight this violence daily to share their thoughts and strategies. We need our civic leaders and corporate community to support those efforts. We need our university researchers to share their skills. And we need the active participation of our city policy makers to launch this effort.
Every day we see the devastation of gun violence in our emergency room. Every. Single. Day.
There are great examples of public health research saving lives, from rear-facing infant car seats, to earlier cancer detection, to smoking cessation. Now is the time to use these same scientific approaches and Chicago’s considerable resources to find the solutions to reduce gun violence.
Sinai Urban Health Institute has been reaching out to fellow researchers, civic leaders, academic resources, public health experts and others who share our urgency to find a solution to disrupt the violence in Chicago.
We believe in our collective power to bring some of the finest research minds together, and we will have a real impact on this epidemic. This is not an idea; it’s an imperative.
As noted above, the federal government won’t be any help, so my only addition would be that the state needs to get directly and actively involved in this endeavor as well. This crisis cannot be solved solely by the police, prosecutors and the judiciary.
