AMSA’s Medical Students for Gun Safety Campaign is delighted to announce that we have published our first gun violence prevention curriculum guide, titled Integrating Firearm Safety into Medical School Curricula! Developed by members of the MSGS Steering Committee, this guide provides numerous resources for getting started on including gun violence prevention into your own school.
The goals for our guide are threefold:
- Explain the background and need to integrate firearm safety into medical school curricula
- Describe how to incorporate firearm safety into a medical school curriculum
- Provide examples of successful firearm safety curricula and resources
Take a look at an excerpt below before you read the full guide:
“Unsafe practices regarding firearms have led to a plethora of accidental and intentional injuries, including suicide, every year. Firearm violence is a healthcare issue, therefore, medical students should be given the tools to address this issue. However, many medical schools in the United States do not have specific means by which to comprehensively address this topic. This guide is not intended to dwell within the realm of politics, but to address public health as it pertains to prospective clinicians; therefore our discussion pertains to “firearm safety” as opposed to “firearm control.”
We aim to advocate for the integration of firearm safety education within the curriculum of medical schools. Engaging in firearm prevention screenings, analogous to the screenings performed to assess other aspects of household safety or to pick up the early signs of a life threatening or chronic disease, may allow the prevention of firearm related accidents and deaths. This guide will also discuss how to allocate a means by which medical schools can pragmatically begin the conversation of firearm safety with faculty and students and its integration into curricula.”
Want to do more work like this? Reach out to msgs.chair@amsa.org to get involved!
