Over the past decade, the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society has emerged as a go-to site for the study of American firearms in the U.S. South, gun politics and society, racial inequities in gun-related trauma, and innovative approaches to gun violence prevention. Our world-class faculty approach gun-related issues from a range of disciplinary perspectives, and teach classes, host seminars and conferences, write seminal articles and books, lead grant projects, and engage with community partners in ways that are generative and collaborative. Students are always welcome to join our many ongoing projects.
A core group of faculty in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society who regularly conduct a wide variety of research related to gun violence make up our Gun Research Core.
PANKA BENCSIK
Dr. Panka Bencsik is an applied microeconomist. Her research investigates the intersection of health and the US criminal justice system, with a focus on the impacts of the opioid crisis, physical health related to nutritional choices, and the causes and consequences of gun violence. Her work combines causal inference with addressing policy-relevant research questions and working with public agencies in testing solutions to large public health challenges.
- Ang, D., Bencsik, P., Bruhn, J., & Derenoncourt, E. (2021). Police violence reduces civilian cooperation and engagement with law enforcement. Brown University, Orlando Bravo Center for Economic Research No. 2021-005.
- Arora, A., Bencsik, P. (2021). Policing Substance Use: Chicago’s Treatment Program for Narcotics Arrests. Working Paper.
KIRSTY CLARK
Kirsty Clark (she/her/hers), assistant professor of medicine, health, and society, is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist. Her research broadly focuses on investigating modifiable risk factors to severe, adverse mental health outcomes – including suicid –disproportionately affecting LGBTQ+ populations. She is interested in access to, use of, and motivations for lethal method choice among LGBTQ+ populations at risk for suicide. The overarching goal of Dr. Clark’s program of research is to inform structural, interpersonal, and individual-level interventions to reduce suicide among LGBTQ+ populations.
- Clark, K. A., & Blosnich, J. R. (2022). If I Had Access to a Gun, I Think I Would Have Used it Instead”: Motivations for Method Choice Among Sexual and Gender Minority Adults Who Made a Recent Near-Fatal Suicide Attempt, LGBT health, 9(4), 276-281.
- Clark, K. A., Blosnich, J. R., Coulter, R. W., Bamwine, P., Bossarte, R. M., & Cochran, S. D. (2020). Sexual orientation differences in gun ownership and beliefs about gun safety policy, General Social Survey 2010–2016. Violence and
gender, 7(1), 6-10. - Blosnich, J. R., Clark, K. A., Mays, V. M., & Cochran, S. D. (2020). Sexual and gender minority status and firearms in the household: findings from the 2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Surveys, California and Texas.
Public Health Reports, 135(6), 778-784. - Clark, K. A., Mays, V. M., Arah, O. A., Kheifets, L. I., & Cochran, S. D. (2020). Sexual orientation differences in lethal methods used in suicide: findings from the National Violent Death Reporting System. Archives of suicide research, 1-17.
KENNETH MacLEISH
TARA McKAY
Tara McKay, assistant professor of medicine, health, and society, is a sociologist who
studies the social and policy determinants of health. Her firearm research examines the
effects of firearm-related and other policy contexts on firearm injury and death among
adults and children in the US.
- McKay, Tara, *Kelsey Gastineau, Jesse Wren, Jin Han, and Alan Storrow. 2022. Trends in Pediatric Firearm-Related Encounters, 2018-2021. Draft and talk available.
- Metzl, Jonathan, Tara McKay, and *Jennifer Piemonte. 2021. Structural Competency and Firearm Research. Social Science and Medicine.
- Metzl, Jonathan, *Jennifer Piemonte, and Tara McKay. 2021. Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and The Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence. Harvard Review of Psychiatry.
- McKay, Tara, Jonathan Metzl, and *Jennifer Piemonte. 2020. Effects of Statewide Coronavirus Public Health Measures and State Gun Laws on American Gun Violence. SSRN Working Paper No. 3680050.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3680050
JONATHAN METZL
Jonathan M. Metzl MD, PhD, is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his MD from the University of Missouri, MA in humanities/poetics and psychiatric internship/residency from Stanford University, and PhD in American culture from University of Michigan. Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award, the 2020 APA Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship, and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship, Dr. Metzl has written extensively about the relationships between guns, mass shootings, and mental illness. His books include The Protest Psychosis, Prozac on the Couch, Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, and What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.
JULIE WARD
Julie A. Ward is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Health, and
Society with a secondary appointment in public policy studies. She is also a Board
Certified Advanced Public Health Nurse. Ward’s research focuses on opportunities and strategies to improve public health and safety systems for the prevention of violence and violence-related trauma in community spaces. Her recent studies have explored public health leaders’ experiences of pandemic-related workplace violence, public support for firearm policies, perceptions of firearm-related public safety, views of minoritized gun owners, and fatal and nonfatal shootings by police.
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