PROVIDENCE – Tonight the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University will join medical professionals nationally calling for a public health response to gun violence in the U.S.
The school will be among doctors, nurses, medical students, EMTs and other health care professionals at 40 locations across the country holding simultaneous rallies calling for specific measures to treat firearm violence as a public health crisis and epidemic.
The call for action is being led by a team of Stanford University physicians and medical students who have created Scrubs Addressing the Firearms Epidemic. Advisers to SAFE include a nonpartisan range of physicians, three retired U.S. military generals, former ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff and medical students and lawyers who specialize in this field. Partner organizations include American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine, co-founded by Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Rhode Island Hospital and associate professor at the Warren Alpert Medical School.
SAFE co-founder Dr. Dean Winslow is a physician and Stanford University professor of medicine, serving 35 years as a U.S. Air Force colonel and flight surgeon.
“In my six deployments as a flight surgeon to Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, I witnessed firsthand the devastating effects that assault weapons have on human bodies,” said Winslow.
Ranney adds, “We can do better for our patients and our communities. No one deserves to live in fear.”
Warren Alpert Medical School medical student and SAFE supporter Julia Donner said, “As medical students being trained to protect our patients’ physical and mental health, we were struck by the lack of medical education available on such a devastating issue. With each mass shooting covered in the news, we watched, wondering what we could do to prevent such loss of life. While we spent our days in medical school learning how to combat and prevent human suffering through incredible advances in medicine and technology, firearms violence was never discussed. We support SAFE to highlight the need to incorporate teaching on firearm safety and gun violence into the medical education curriculum for medical students.”
Students at medical schools across the country from Harvard University and Yale University to New York University will join in standing united on Sept. 17 to focus attention on:
- The more active role that doctors, nurses and health care professionals are taking in attacking this public health crisis
- Advocating that firearm safety education be included in every comprehensive health plan for patients
- Initiatives to develop materials to help physicians and nurses incorporate firearm safety education to keep families healthy
- The crippling legal limitations on gun violence research by government agencies
SAFE board member, noted author and Stanford physician Dr. Abraham Verghese says of the SAFE mission: “Injury to the human body, whether accidental, self-inflicted or otherwise, becomes just as preventable as the small pox and diphtheria that took lives in generations past. As health care professionals, it is our duty to protect the lives of our patients in every way we can.”
Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Borkowski@PBN.com.
