Watch Now: Research for People & Planet Webinar Series | Daily Heat and Firearm Violence in 100 US Cities
Firearm violence is a leading public health crisis in the US. And now a new study has attributed almost 8,000 US shootings in recent years to above-average temperatures.
Researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health and the University of Washington analyzed daily temperatures and shootings in the 100 US cities with the largest burden of gun violence from 2015-2020. They found that a sizeable proportion of firearm shootings in these cities is linked to unseasonably high daily temperatures, both during the summer and throughout the year.
In this webinar, the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability explores the study and its implications for reducing gun violence in the US, including the importance of heat adaptation strategies as part of urban climate action planning.
Presented by: Emma Gause, Research Scientist, Center for Climate and Health, and Jonathan Jay, Assistant Professor, Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health — co-authors of Analysis of Daily Ambient Temperature and Firearm Violence in 100 US Cities
“A deeper element of this work is how it might help us understand another dimension of the problem, which is that gun victimization displays some of the starkest racial disparities that we see for any health outcome,” Jonathan Jay, Assistant Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
Watch Now (Recorded April 28, 2023)
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