Hospital Systems Can Lead the Change

• In Event: Healthcare Approaches to Justice

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate whether hospitals that identify as Victim Service Providers (VSPs) adequately respond to and support gun violence incidents at the county subdivision level. We use various datasets, including the US Census 2020 population, the 2023 gun violence (GV) incident archive, the 2022 medicare inpatient hospitals (MIH), and the 2017 National Census of Victim Service Providers (VSPs) survey. We integrate all datasets based on geographical locations. We perform geocoding on 44,918 GV incidents, 3,120 MIHs, and 258 VSP hospitals. We spatially link the Census population dataset to the geocoded GV, MIH, and VSP datasets. The output yields county subdivision polygons containing the GV incidents, MIH, and VSP hospital counts. We examine descriptive statistics of numbers GV, MHI, and VSP to explain the current situation of hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs).

Authors

• Kirk Johnson, Montclair State University

• Paradorn Wongchanapai, Montclair State University

• Sheetal Ranjan, Montclair State University

• Aakash Shah, Hackensack Meridian Health