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Injury Prevention

Session: Injury Prevention Works in Progress

WIP 106 - Must Be The Money: The Impact of Political Funding on Pediatric Firearm Injury Mortality

Monday, May 6, 2024
9:30 AM – 11:30 AM ET
Poster Number: WIP 106
Publication Number: WIP 106.2522

    WIP Presenting Author(s)

  • Amber V. McKenna, MD (she/her/hers)

    Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Resident
    University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
    Madison, Wisconsin, United States



Background: In 2017, firearm injuries replaced motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 24 years old in the United States. This same year, firearm injuries research was shown to receive just 1.6% of expected funding compared to the funding for the 29 other leading causes of death for adults. In 2019, the Dickey Amendment, which removed funding for firearm injuries from the annual budget of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was repealed, and 25 million dollars annually was restored to the budget. The impact of this funding on state legislation and pediatric firearm injury mortality is unknown. Likewise, the impact of private funding from pro-gun lobby organizations is unknown.

Objective: To elucidate political funding factors which contribute to pediatric firearm injury mortality.

Design/Methods: The CDC’s WONDER database was queried for pediatric firearm injury mortalities from 2016 to 2021, among those aged 0 to 18 years old, on an individual state basis. State ranking for firearm legislation was obtained from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. States were ranked 1-12, for each year, 1 being most restrictive and 12 being the least restrictive. Funding from lobby organizations was obtained from the Open Secrets website. No IRB approval was required for this population-based study; all information was gathered from publicly available sources. Data analysis will be completed by March 2024 and will include obtaining correlation coefficients for each state’s private funding and pediatric firearm injury mortality rates by year. year. Repeated-measures, mixed-modeling will be used to look at the effect
of state- level funding on firearm mortalities while accounting for state- level differences over
time. A timeline of national funding changes and national pediatric firearm injury mortality rates will be constructed and included.