What to know
CDC funded sixteen research awards under RFA-CE-20-006: Research Grants to Prevent Firearm-Related Violence and Injuries. Research projects were funded for two or three years. This page lists the projects that received funding for two years.
RFA-CE-20-006: Research grants to prevent firearm-related violence and injuries
The purpose of this initiative is to solicit investigator-initiated research to understand and prevent firearm-related injuries, deaths, and crime. For the purposes of this NOFO, firearm-related injuries, deaths, and crime include mass shooting incidents, other firearm homicides/assaults, firearm suicides/self-harm, unintentional firearm deaths and injuries, and firearm-related crime.
RFA-CE-20-006 is intended to directly improve understanding of firearm-related violence and promising prevention approaches by supporting activities under one or both of the following two research objectives:
- Objective one: Research to help inform the development of innovative and promising opportunities to enhance safety and prevent firearm-related injuries, deaths, and crime.
- Objective two: Research to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of innovative and promising strategies to keep individuals, families, schools, and communities safe from firearm-related injuries, deaths, and crime.
Firearm behavioral practices and suicide risk in US army soldiers and veterans
- Two-year project: September 30, 2020 – September 29, 2022
- Principal investigator: Dr. Catherine Dempsey, Henry M. Jackson Foundation
- Year two award: $350,000
This study will analyze longitudinal data to improve understanding of the motivations and opportunities for prevention among service members and veterans owning firearms, storing them in unsafe conditions and using them to hurt others or themselves.
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Veterans bear a disproportionate share of the burden of firearm suicide. This study will analyze existing data from the longitudinal Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers Study (STARRS-LS), which includes more than 14,000 soldiers. The study will identify firearm behavioral practices that may predict suicidal behaviors; establish if there is a relationship between geographic location and suicide; identify the principal reasons for keeping a gun and the degree to which identified reasons mediate suicide risk; and establish if there is a relationship between storage practices and personality characteristics or other mental health issues. The broader impact of this study is anticipated to be the development of a comprehensive understanding of risks contributing to firearm mediated suicide, thus improving risk identification capabilities in both the military and civilian populations. See updates.
Exposure to violence and subsequent weapons use: integrative data analysis across two urban high-risk communities
- Two-year project: September 30, 2020 – September 29, 2022
- Principal investigator: Dr. Rowell Huesmann, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
- Year two award: $346,354
This study will use integrative analyses of two longitudinal datasets to examine how individual, family, and neighborhood risk factors for gun violence affect the development of violence- and weapons-related social cognitions and behaviors into early adulthood.
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Firearm violence in the United States is a serious public health concern, and the rates are much higher among African American and Hispanic youth compared to White youth. This study will conduct integrative data analyses using data from two longitudinal studies on youth exposure to violence and subsequent weapons use in urban areas at high risk for gun violence. The analysis will examine how risk factors for gun violence at multiple levels of the social ecology (including self-report and geospatial crime coding of gun violence and other characteristics at the neighborhood level) affect the development of violence-related and weapons-related social cognitions that shape use of guns and other weapons into early adulthood. The findings are expected to have implications for enhancing the impact of community- and school-based prevention programs targeting firearm violence specifically and youth violence more generally. See updates.
Prevalence of community gun violence exposure and consequences for adolescent well-being: identifying sources of heterogeneity to disrupt the cycle of violence
- Two-year project: September 30, 2020 – September 29, 2022
- Principal investigator: Dr. Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, University of California at Davis
- Year two award: $301,478
This study will estimate the population prevalence and consequences of youths’ direct and indirect exposure to community gun violence to inform prevention efforts.
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Community violence is a recognized form of trauma that disproportionately impacts youth of color. There is growing consensus that community gun violence exposure and its consequences may extend to youth even if they do not report experiencing gun violence and even if they do not hear or see it in person. Existing studies have largely relied on self-reported survey items that prohibit examination of this broader conceptualization of exposure. The proposed project will use a unique combination of longitudinal data on a national, probability-based sample of youth and their families, schools, and neighborhoods geospatially linked with temporal and spatial information on deadly gun violence incidents. It will examine the population prevalence and health-related consequences of youths' exposure to community gun violence, regardless of whether the violence was experienced firsthand. Results from this study are intended to help enhance the process of identifying individual, familial, school, and neighborhood-level factors associated with increased vulnerability or resilience to the adverse impacts of community gun violence exposure to guide efforts to disrupt the cycle of violence. See updates.
Using small area estimates of firearm ownership to investigate violence disparities and firearm policy effects
- Two-year project: September 30, 2020 – September 29, 2022
- Principal investigator: Dr. Andrew Morral, Rand Corporation
- Year two award: $349,758
This study is designed to use small-area estimation techniques to generate informative estimates of household firearm ownership and then use these new estimates to test the effects of firearm safety policies.
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Gaps in available data measuring firearm ownership across population strata over time limit the ability to evaluate firearm safety policies and interventions. This study uses small-area estimation techniques to generate informative estimates of household firearm ownership within strata defined by gender, race, marital status, urbanicity, and state, over the period 1980-2020. The study will then use the new measures of firearm ownership to understand disparities in firearm mortality and to conduct innovative and more sensitive and precise evaluations of the effects of policies designed to improve firearm safety. Findings will be used to inform how firearm ownership varies across populations, communities, and time and how this variation relates to differential firearm homicide and suicide risk among subgroups. See updates.
Firearm access, opioid use, and firearm suicide
- Two-year project: September 30, 2020 – September 29, 2022
- Principal investigator: Dr. Aimee Moulin, University of California at Davis
- Year two award: $316,127
This study examines the synergistic impacts of firearm access and opioid-related harm on firearm suicide risk at the individual and population levels in the state of California.
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Research on risky opioid use among firearm owners is limited, though evidence suggests the link between substance use and suicide extends to firearm owners. This study will incorporate multiple population-based sources of existing data, including but not limited to mortality and emergency department/hospital records. The study will use an individual-level case-control design and a population-level time series analysis to examine whether personal firearm ownership moderates the impact of individual and community opioid-related harm on individual firearm suicide risk. Similarly, the study will examine whether firearm availability moderates the impact of community opioid-related harm on firearm suicide rates. Results are intended to inform innovative and promising opportunities to enhance safety and prevent self-directed firearm-related injuries and deaths. See updates.
Understanding the epidemiology of firearm injuries in a large urban county: a guide for targeted intervention efforts
- Two-year project: September 30, 2020 – September 29, 2022
- Principal investigator: Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria, Baylor College of Medicine
- Year two award: $330,672
This study will integrate data from trauma centers, the medical examiner’s office, and law enforcement to examine individual-level and neighborhood-level risk factors for firearm-related violence.
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Firearm violence is a major public health issue; however, efforts to curb firearm injuries and deaths are hampered by incomplete and out-of-date data. This study will conduct a three-year retrospective review of data on children and adults who were injured or killed by firearms and integrate data from trauma centers, the medical examiner's office, and law enforcement. The analyses will identify and categorize individual-level and neighborhood-level geographic, demographic, temporal, social, and socioeconomic risk factors for firearm-related violence. The integration of firearm violence data from multiple data sources in a large and diverse population center is intended to provide a unique platform to analyze injury clusters and provide evidence-based prioritization of risk factors to help communities design targeted interventions. See updates.
An examination of firearm violence crises using crisis text line data: filling a critical gap
- Two-year project: September 30, 2020 – September 29, 2022
- Principal investigator: Dr. Anna Yaros, Research Triangle Institute
- Year two award: $349,545
This study will analyze Crisis Text Line data related to multiple types of firearm violence to help inform firearm violence prevention activities.
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There is a critical need for more information on the moment of crisis immediately before an act of firearm violence. This study will analyze data from the Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit organization that provides free around-the-clock text message support to anyone experiencing any crisis, to examine text conversations related to multiple types of firearm violence (e.g., impending acts of suicide, domestic violence, mass shootings). The study will conduct content analysis to examine how texters initiate and continue conversations related to firearm violence, compare texts related to firearm crises with those related to non-firearm crises, identify risk and protective factors for different types of firearm crises relative to those of non-firearm crises, and track the types of firearm texts before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and consider how pandemic-specific anxieties are affecting the texts. The study is designed to provide insight about the best ways to stop firearm violence before it occurs. See updates.
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Funding Year 2020: 3-year projects
Content Source:
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control