Gun violence is a national public health crisis. As an academic public health community, we have a fundamental role in advancing long-term solutions to this epidemic. This program will convene members of the ASPPH Gun Violence Prevention Task Force to discuss actions that we can take, with a focus on four core areas of intervention, including education and training, research, policy and advocacy, and practice.

This event is cohosted with the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH).

For any questions or accommodation requests, please contact sphevent@bu.edu.

Resources

Speakers

Linda Degutis

Lecturer, Yale University School of Public Health

Linda Degutis

Lecturer, Yale University School of Public Health

Dr. Degutis, a native of Chicago, received her Bachelor of Science degree from DePaul University, and her MSN and DrPH from Yale University. She is a consultant in injury and violence prevention and policy, public health preparedness, and public health policy. Some of her current work focuses on suicide prevention in veterans, and firearm violence prevention, as well as public health practice.

She is former Executive Director of Defense Health Horizons, a program of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, based at the Uniformed Services University. In addition, she was the Chief Science Officer for The Avielle Foundation. She chaired the Board of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), is past president of the Society for the Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR), and a member of the Advisory Board of the College of Science and Health of DePaul University.

She currently chairs the board of the Stop Abuse Campaign. Previously, she was the Director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC. At Yale, she was Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Public Health and was the Director and Co-PI of the Yale Center for Public Health Preparedness, which designed and implemented education in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. She served as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in the Office of the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN). She is a Past President of the American Public Health Association (APHA), the oldest and largest public health association in the world. Dr. Degutis, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, received a the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship Alumni, has received the Distinguished Career and Public Service Awards from the Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section of APHA, and was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health. Her work has focused on public health policy, injury and violence, gun violence prevention, suicide prevention substance abuse and policy, as well as disaster preparedness and mitigation.
David Hemenway

Director, Harvard Injury Control Research Center; Professor of Health Policy, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

David Hemenway

Director, Harvard Injury Control Research Center; Professor of Health Policy, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

David Hemenway, Ph.D., Professor of Health Policy, is Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He formerly spent a week each year at the University of Vermont as a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large.

Dr. Hemenway teaches classes on injury and on economics. At HSPH he has won ten teaching awards as well as the inaugural community engagement award.

Dr. Hemenway has written widely on injury prevention, including articles on firearms, violence, suicide, child abuse, motor vehicle crashes, fires, falls and fractures. He headed the pilot for the National Violent Death Reporting System, which provides detailed and comparable information on suicide and homicide. In 2012 he was recognized by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention as one of the “twenty most influential injury and violence professionals over the past twenty years.”

In articles on insurance, Dr. Hemenway described a general reason why low-risk individuals often buy insurance, and coined the term “propitious selection.” Recent economic studies have focused on empirically determining which goods are more and less positional (e.g., bought largely to “keep up with the Joneses”). An early statistics article, Why Your Classes are Larger than Average, has been anthologized in various mathematical collections.

Dr. Hemenway has written five books. Industrywide Voluntary Product Standards (1975) describes the role of voluntary standards and standardization in the U.S. economy. Monitoring and Compliance: the Political Economy of Inspection (1985) describes the importance of inspection processes in ensuring that regulations are followed, and the reasons the system often fails. Prices and Choices (3rd edition) (1993) is a collection of twenty-six of his original essays applying microeconomic theory to everyday life.

Private Guns Public Health (2006, 2017) describes the public health approach to reducing firearm violence, and summarizes the scientific studies on the firearms and health.

While You Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention (2009) describes more than sixty successes, and over thirty heroes who have made the world safer. This readable book helps answer the questions “What is public health?” and “What is the public health approach?” To read more about this ode to public health, click here for Dr. Hemenway’s book blog.
Laura Magaña

President & CEO, ASPPH

Laura Magaña

President & CEO, ASPPH

Dr. Laura Magaña is the President and CEO of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). Under Dr. Magaña’s leadership, ASPPH has continued to advance its mission to advance academic public health by mobilizing the collective power of its members to drive excellence and innovation in education, research, and practice. During her tenure, ASPPH has strengthened academic public health research through the Data Center, launched the academic public health leadership institute, and enhanced the voice of academic public health through advocacy efforts. She expanded the association’s global reach by welcoming international members and led ASPPH to join with other regional associations that represent schools and programs of public health around the world to found the Global Network for Academic Public Health, which enhances academic public health worldwide through mutual learning and collaborations between academic public health institutions globally. Dr. Magaña has also launched five strategic initiatives to address critical issues in public health as part of ASPPH’s Vision 2030: Dismantling Racism in Academic Public Health, Climate Change and Health, Framing the Future 2030, Gun Violence Prevention and the ASPPH Workforce Development Center.

Prior to joining ASPPH, Dr. Magaña dedicated more than 35 years to successfully leading the transformation and advancements of public and private universities in Mexico; educational organizations in the United States; United Nations programs; and nongovernmental organizations in Central America and Europe. She was most recently the dean of the School of Public Health in Mexico at the ASPPH-member National Institute of Public Health (INSP). She has also been a faculty member and lecturer at universities around the world.

Dr. Magaña’s diverse portfolio features 90 academic publications and educational technological developments—many of which relate to learning environments, the use of technology in education, and public health education. She frequently speaks with universities, partners, and at national and international conferences on issues such as social determinants of health, health equity, the future of education for public health, the public health workforce, and critical issues in global public health.
Corinne Peek-Asa

Vice Chancellor for Research, UC San Diego

Corinne Peek-Asa

Vice Chancellor for Research, UC San Diego

Corinne Peek-Asa, Ph.D. is the Vice Chancellor for Research (VCR) overseeing the Office of Research Affairs (ORA) which plays a key role in the university’s billion-dollar research enterprise. VCR Peek-Asa guides the university’s research mission to provide the vision and support for our faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and students to excel in scholarship, research and discovery, and ensure that our campus has the research administration structure needed for such a thriving research portfolio. Dr. Peek-Asa also oversees the UC San Diego Office of Innovation and Commercialization, which supports broad campus initiatives to accelerate integration of innovation activities with research, education, and engagement.

VCR Peek-Asa is also a professor with distinction of epidemiology at UC San Diego. She was formerly the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Public Health and the William Battershell Distinguished Professor at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on the epidemiology, implementation, and translation of programs and policies to prevent acute traumatic injuries and violence. She directs an NIH-funded International Trauma and Violence Research Training Program and was the Director of the CDC-funded Injury Prevention Research Center from 2004 to 2020. VCR Peek-Asa is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine andco-chairs the NAM Accelerating Progress in Traumatic Brain Injury Forum. She was a 2010 ResearchAmerica! Public Health Hero. Her firearm violence prevention research has included policy evaluation; causal epidemiology research on firearm use in homicide, assault, and suicide; cost studies; and, surveillance research. The impact of VCR Peek-Asa’s work to reduce the burden of traumatic injury and violence led to numerous public health advancements, local and federal policies, and prevention programs.
John A. Rich

Director, Rush BMO Institute for Health Equity, Rush University Medical Center

John A. Rich

Director, Rush BMO Institute for Health Equity, Rush University Medical Center

Dr. John A. Rich is the director of the RUSH BMO Institute for Health Equity, a part of the Rush University System for Health. The RUSH BMO Institute coordinates health equity programs across the University System for Health and within its diverse communities.

Prior to his appointment at RUSH, Dr. Rich was a professor and former Chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel Dornsife University School of Public Health. He was also the Co-Director of the Drexel Center for Nonviolence and Justice, a multidisciplinary effort to address violence and trauma to improve physical and mental health. Dr. Rich’s work has focused on issues of urban violence and trauma and health disparities, particularly as they affect the health of men of color. Dr. Rich is also an expert in qualitative research methods and narrative analysis. In 2006, Dr. Rich was granted a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In awarding this distinction, the Foundation cited his work to design “new models of healthcare that stretch across the boundaries of public health, education, social service, and justice systems to engage young men in caring for themselves and their peers.”

Prior to joining Drexel University, Dr. Rich served as the Medical Director of the Boston Public Health Commission where he led the city’s initiatives on Men’s Health, Cancer, Cardiovascular Health and Health Disparities. As a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, he created the Young Men’s Health Clinic and initiated the Boston HealthCREW, a program to train inner city young men as peer health educators. His book about urban violence titled Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) has drawn critical acclaim.

Dr. Rich earned his AB degree in English from Dartmouth College, his MD from Duke University School of Medicine, and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his internship and residency in primary care internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and a fellowship in general internal medicine at the Harvard Medical School. In 2009, Dr. Rich was elected to the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Jennifer Mascia

Senior News Writer, The Trace (MODERATOR)

Jennifer Mascia

Senior News Writer, The Trace (MODERATOR)

Jennifer is a senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace. She previously covered gun violence at The New York Times. In her decade on this beat, she’s covered community gun violence, the intersection of domestic violence and guns, and the growing role of firearms in public life. She currently presides over the Ask The Trace series and tracks news developments on the gun beat.