Northwell targets safety, not rights, in smart gun fight

By GREGORY ZELLER //

With Northwell Health in the lead, a battalion of nationwide healthcare networks is uniting against gun violence – and it’s hoping to leave politics outside.

Instead, citing a “public health crisis,” the new Northwell-led collaboration will unite executives, researchers and healthcare workers from University of Chicago Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Medical Center and other disparate hospitals and health systems on a mission targeting safety, not the Second Amendment.

At least, that’s the plan for the Gun Violence Prevention Learning Collaborative for Health Systems and Hospitals, self-billed as a “multiyear, interactive and apolitical forum” focused on best practices for preventing firearm injuries and deaths.

The statistics can be downright terrifying: Through April 13, the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive counted 12,047 U.S. gun-related deaths and 143 U.S. mass shootings (four or more victims in one shooting event), just this year.

With all that hot lead bloodying healthcare systems and filling morgues across the nation, Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling said healthcare providers can’t simply wait around for the next Code Red. Instead, they “have an obligation to set aside political concerns and devote time and resources to identify solutions that will help curtail this senseless violence.”

Michael Dowling: Reducing bloodshed.

“By working together, sharing best practices and promoting ongoing dialogue, our goal is to develop action plans that can be put in place in our local communities to reduce the risk of further bloodshed,” Dowling added.

The nobility of the cause is undeniable, and the Learning Collaborative’s methodology is sound: executive think tanks, monthly seminars, open dialogue with law enforcement, school-based violence-prevention strategies and other community engagement, with formulation, preparation and implementation neatly divided into three year-long phases.

But in a country where civilians own upwards of 390 million guns – about 120.5 civilian-owned firearms per 100 U.S. residents, doubling the rate in runner-up Yemen and tripling the rate in third-place Serbia, and those would be the registered guns – keeping politics out is a longshot indeed.

Northwell’s own press release trumpeting the Learning Collaborative’s launch rips recent gun-violence sensations straight from the headlines, invoking March mass shootings in a Colorado supermarket and a Georgia massage parlor.

Even Dowling played the political card, referencing President Joe Biden’s recent flurry of executive actions on gun control as “an important first step in confronting a public health emergency that is killing tens of thousands of people every year.”

Stephen Mette: Mitigating risks.

“The recent killings in Boulder and Atlanta underscore the reality that gun violence is an epidemic that is not going away on its own,” the CEO added.

But compassion, not politics, will be the driver here, according to the Learning Collaborative. “We need to view the victims as more than statistics,” said pediatric trauma surgeon Chethan Sathya, director of Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention, who noted “regardless of where they live, Americans are at risk.”

“What we’ve seen across the country, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, is a call for help,” Sathya added.

Ultimately, “I do not believe gun violence or how we reduce it are Second Amendment issues,” said Stephen Mette, CEO of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center – ground zero in a state that ranks fifth for firearms-related deaths among children and eighth in gun-related deaths overall.

“Americans have Constitutional protections for gun ownership,” Mette said in a statement. “But we must also acknowledge that there are too many guns in the hands of too many people who should not have access to them, because of risk to themselves or others.”