Public health advocates call for increased funding for firearm violence prevention research in FY25
June 2024
BCHC has joined more than 430 other health organizations to call on Congress to fund firearm morbidity and mortality prevention research at CDC, NIH, and the National Institute of Justice.
These organizations have requested that Congress provide $35 million for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), $25 million for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and $1 million for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to conduct public health research into firearm morbidity and mortality prevention.
We need a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to reducing firearm-related suicides, violent crime, and accidental shootings. Rigorous prevention research that can accurately quantify and describe the roots of gun violence, inform strategies for responsible gun owners to avoid preventable injuries and deaths, and identify non-partisan opportunities for reducing the related morbidity and mortality is the foundation of such an approach.
A rigorous 2021 report estimated that the federal government will need to spend approximately $100 million per year to fully fund a comprehensive research agenda on reducing gun violence.
Across this country, communities are suffering from preventable firearm-related injuries and deaths. Suicide, violent crime, and accidental shootings cause trauma to families, communities, and children affected by these preventable tragedies. In 2022, the most recent year for which we have data, firearm-related injuries led to 48,117 total fatalities. While the homicide rate declined slightly from a record high in 2021, it remains unacceptably high, and the suicide rate continued to rise in 2022.
We need a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to reducing firearm-related suicides, violent crime, and accidental shootings. Rigorous prevention research that can accurately quantify and describe the roots of gun violence, inform strategies for responsible gun owners to avoid preventable injuries and deaths, and identify non-partisan opportunities for reducing the related morbidity and mortality is the foundation of such an approach.
We would like to thank Congress for its continued support for this public health research in FY24, providing $12.5 million each to the CDC and NIH for the fifth consecutive fiscal year. These initial investments are a crucial step toward applying a public health approach to increasing gun safety and reducing firearm-related injuries and deaths, and we are excited to see these funds contributing to important research projects that are now underway. The CDC has made 34 awards for two- and three-year projects to improve scientific understanding of firearm-related violence and to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of prevention strategies.
Several of these projects provide insights on how to reduce suicide risk in U.S. Army soldiers and veterans, how to partner with families and adolescents in rural areas to promote firearm safety, how to improve efforts to reduce urban firearm injuries, and the relationship between firearm access and opioid-related harm on firearm suicide risk, among other topics.
And this research is already yielding valuable results, including insights into how children and teens experience gun violence in big cities and its impacts on their health, the needs of young people involved with the juvenile justice system who are at particularly high risk of experiencing firearm violence, and crisis hotline data to better understand how mass shootings impact young people. The NIH is funding research on the determinants of firearm injury, the identification of those at risk, and the evaluation of innovative interventions.
These initial investments are important, but increased funding is still needed to overcome the decades-long lack of federal funding that set back our nation’s response to the public health issue of firearm-related morbidity and mortality. The agencies have received many more quality proposals than they are able to fund, and additional funding can generate research into important issues, such as the best ways to prevent unintended firearm injuries and fatalities among women and children; the most effective methods to prevent firearm-related suicides; the measures that can best prevent the next shooting at a school or public place; and numerous other vital public health questions.
Our groups strongly urge Congress to increase the funding level to $35 million for the CDC, $25 million for the NIH, and $1 million for the NIJ for firearm morbidity and mortality prevention research as part of FY 2025 appropriations. Continued and expanded funding could support the creation of additional, large, multi-year studies and accelerate the rebuilding of a research community that shrank in the decades before Congress restored this federal funding. Robust and sustained research on motor vehicle crashes and subsequent legislation has helped save hundreds of thousands of lives through public health interventions, including seat belts and other safety features. The same approach can help reduce firearm-related injuries in our communities, including ensuring that the CDC, NIH, and NIJ are able to adequately fund non-biased, evidence-based research into this public health priority. Exploring additional agencies to fund for this work would also ensure this research can address all necessary areas of inquiry and move us closer to the approximately $100 million necessary annually to fully support this research field.
