By TERRY LYNAM //
Given the inability (or unwillingness) of our elected leaders to further strengthen the nation’s gun-safety laws, healthcare leaders from across the country are stepping up to confront what they view as a public health crisis.
The newly convened National Health Care CEO Council on Gun Violence Prevention & Safety includes 47 leaders from some of the nation’s largest health systems and children’s hospitals, including Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling, along with New York-Presbyterian’s Steven Corwin and New York City Health + Hospitals’ Mitchell Katz.
The creation of the CEO Council – highlighted in a full-page ad published Feb. 26 in The New York Times – is significant because, for the first time, it provides a forum for healthcare executives to leverage their collective voices and resources against a historic spike in gun-related deaths and injuries.
The C-suite buy-in builds on earlier grassroots efforts by healthcare practitioners who were ironically energized by a mocking late-2018 NRA tweet that told “anti-gun” doctors to “stay in their lane,” following a series of research papers about firearm injuries and deaths published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Terry Lynam: Armed response.
This spawned the medical community’s “ThisIsOurLane” digital movement, uniting healthcare professionals around gun violence prevention advocacy, research and storytelling. It now includes more than 39,000 followers.
In February 2020, Northwell created its own Center for Gun Violence Prevention, and in April 2021 established the Gun Violence Prevention Learning Collaborative for Hospitals and Health Systems. Over the past two years, more than 700 medical professionals from 35 states have participated in the Learning Collaborative’s monthly virtual forums, where they share best practices that have proven effective in curbing violence in their communities.
As a result of the Learning Collaborative, 40 percent of participating healthcare organizations have started or expanded gun violence prevention efforts, demonstrating the impact of this type of sustained dialogue.
“With healthcare leaders at the forefront of this movement, we will leave a legacy we can all be proud of, just like we’ve done on so many other public health crises over the years,” said Dowling, who recently gathered the CEO Council and more than 2,000 others (in person and virtually) at Northwell’s 4th Annual Gun Violence Prevention Forum.
The New York City conference featured U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steven Dettelbach and other government and healthcare officials – including U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who successfully negotiated the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act approved by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden last year.
Vivek Murthy: Society must protect its young, according to the surgeon general.
While the new law did not go as far as advocates would have liked – banning the sale of assault weapons, for instance, or raising the legal age to buy them – it represented the most significant overhaul of our nation’s gun laws since 1993’s Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.
The new law’s passage in June 2022 occurred a month after the Robb Elementary School massacre in Texas, which killed two teachers and 19 students between the ages of 7 and 10. It was made possible by 15 Republican U.S. senators – including the bill’s cosponsor, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) – and 14 GOP House of Representatives members who had the courage to stand up to the NRA and others espousing the phony argument that common-sense gun-safety measures infringe on Second Amendment rights.
Reshaping the public discourse around gun violence is one of the goals of the new CEO Council. As was the case with cigarettes, opioids, HIV and other public health crises, healthcare leaders can play a pivotal role in depolarizing conversations around gun violence and leveraging their influence to advocate for meaningful changes.
“The voices of people in medicine and public health could not be more important,” Surgeon General Murthy said during the Feb. 28 conference. “This is one of those moments when we have to step up and engage and advocate and lead because our kids are depending on us.”
Leading man: Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling is leading a national anti-gun violence crusade.
Noting that guns surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in 2021, claiming the lives of 2,519 people 17 and under, Murthy deemed it “more than a public health issue.”
“This is a moral issue,” the surgeon general added. “It’s whether we are going to sit by and allow thousands of children to die each year.
“The sacred responsibility of any society is to take care of its kids, to set them up for a healthy, fulfilling life,” Murthy added. “We can no longer allow politics or division or interest groups to stand in the way of us getting to solutions.”
Terry Lynam is a communications consultant and former senior vice president/chief public relations officer for Northwell Health.
Another thoughtful and important piece from the front lines of healthcare by Terry Lynam.