Session Details
The Struggle is Real: Starting and Maintaining a Firearm Safe Storage Program at Your Institution
Professor of Pediatrics and of Emergency Medicine
Yale School of Medicine
kirsten.bechtel@yale.edu
Community Health & Benefit | External Affairs
Seattle Children's
Isabell.sakamoto@seattlechildrens.org
Associate Trauma Medical Director
Co-Director, Emergency Medical Services
Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine
St. Louis Children's Hospital
Washington University in St. Louis
lindsayedavidson@wustl.edu
Emory University School of Medicine
Attending Physician, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta
Co-Chair, Violence Prevention Task Force
Emory Injury Prevention Research Center
Co-PI, Atlanta Injury Free Chapter
sofia.s.chaudhary@emory.edu
Division Chief, Community and General Pediatrics
Director of Population Health and Advocacy
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
McGovern Medical School
Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital
Nonresident Fellow, Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University
Best practices from the literature suggest that providing locking and storage devices to parents who are firearm owners is helpful in promoting safe firearm storage, especially during a behavioral health crisis in their child. This may reduce the likelihood of future injury or death from a firearm. However, many children’s hospitals do not have such programs in place. This workshop aims to help participants learn from program managers who have successfully started such programs at their institutions so that barriers and facilitators to program success can be disseminated amongst workshop participants. Additionally, workshop leaders will assist participants in drawing up a preliminary plan to initiate a firearm safety program at their respective institutions.
1. Understand the rationale for programs that provide locking and storage devices to parents who are firearm owners.
2. Develop program goals, values, and mission and identify key messaging to meet the needs of the community/institution.
3. Become familiar with barriers and facilitators to a program initiation within a hospital system (e.g., political, administrative, financial).
4. Determine who your key stakeholders are to initiate and sustain a program.
5. Learn how to engage with legal leadership at your institution.
6. Learn what various distribution mechanisms are available (e.g., community events, patient bedside, outpatient and inpatient settings, Emergency Department, universal hospital screening, at-risk screening).