Colorado doctors need research to help prevent gun deaths
We live in a country where gun violence is never far from our mind. Just recently, news alerts notified us of yet another tragedy, this time in Virginia Beach, Va., that horrified and saddened the nation. But I didn’t have time to dwell on this tragedy, because I was busy seeing patients in my clinic in Fort Collins.
On any given day, many of my patients share personal stories and fears about gun violence — some have lost relatives to gun suicide, others are parents who are scared to drop off their kids at school, and others can’t bear to read or watch the onslaught of news stories about gun violence because it is affecting their sleep and ability to function. More and more it feels like the trauma of gun violence is inescapable — but it doesn’t have to be this way.
As stewards of public health, physicians have a unique perspective on the dangers of gun violence. We see firsthand the
physical and psychological damage it causes to the people we took an oath to heal. But to treat gun violence as the public health crisis that it is, we first need to understand it. That’s where funding research into gun violence comes in.
As governor of the Colorado Chapter of the American College of Physicians, I’m proud of the work we have done advocating for gun violence research. For more than two decades, the ACP has recognized firearms violence as a public health issue and advocated for meaningful policy changes that would decrease firearms-related injuries and deaths.
Our work hasn’t gone unchallenged. Last October, ACP released an updated version of our policy to combat gun violence. The National Rifle Association objected to our paper, saying that “someone should tell selfimportant anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane.” Their ignorant comment solicited an outpouring of support from the medical community.
Doctors such as Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine and a gun-violence survivor himself, tweeted that “gun violence is not just a statistic. These people are fathers, daughters, sisters.” Esther Choo, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University, wrote: “We are not anti-gun; we are anti-bullet holes in our patients.” The deeply personal stories that medical and health professionals shared about their experiences with firearms violence conveyed how crucial it is that we act now to fund research into this epidemic.
The day after the massacre in Virginia Beach, I stood alongside my colleagues to demand Congress heed our calls to action. Coming together at Civic Center park for a rally, doctors and nurses from across Colorado told their stories about why we need to fund gun violence research.
All of us went into medicine to help people, but the darkest moments of the jobs often leave us feeling helpless — helpless as we try to save a young man bleeding out on the operation table, or helpless as we break the news to grieving parents that their child didn’t survive the gunshot wound. Funding research into gun violence can help make these all-too-common tragedies far less likely.
When gunshot victims do survive, their injuries follow them long after they’ve left the emergency room. As their wounds turn to scars, the trauma, both physical and emotional, lingers forever. Major trauma, even in childhood, has been associated with the development of chronic medical conditions in adulthood, including cancer and diabetes.
There are so many examples of the ways that research has saved lives in the medical field. Through research, we’ve learned that Pap smears can prevent deaths from cervical cancer and lowering blood pressure can prevent death from heart attacks. To us, it’s blatantly obvious that without research we’ll never find a solution.
Each day that passes without action means more than 100 Americans will die from gunfire. We can continue treating the symptoms of gun violence, the bullet wounds and the paralysis and the PTSD and the anxiety, but it’s up to Congress to finally let the nation’s top researchers and scientists do what they do best: Get to the bottom of public safety crises afflicting Americans and prescribe a solution.
As the conversation on gun violence continues to reverberate throughout the country, from Denver to our nation’s capital, our request to Colorado policymakers who can influence the debate in Washington couldn’t be clearer: We need funding for gun violence research so we can do our job and save lives. And we need it now. Justin Mock, Vice President of Finance and CFO; Bill Reynolds, Senior VP, Circulation and Production; Bob Kinney, Vice President, Information Technology