In the trauma bay and in the data on firearm injury, LDI senior fellow and assistant professor of surgery in the Perelman School of Medicine Elinore Kaufman searches for solutions to firearm violence.
As rates of firearm injury deaths in the U.S. continue to outpace other countries, Kaufman’s research is aimed at helping policymakers understand how their policy choices can help address this epidemic. Kaufman is the medical director of the Penn Trauma Violence Recovery Program (PTVRP), a hospital-based violence intervention program that provides direct services to survivors of violent injury treated at Penn.
Over the past several years, she and coauthors have examined firearm injury from many angles, focusing on the role of social media and whether guaranteed income could make a difference in the recovery of victims. She has also helped create a team to support the psychological and physical well-being of shooting victims.
“As a trauma surgeon, I pride myself on fixing problems, and at Penn, we provide state-of-the-art acute care to our injured patients; including 80 people actively enrolled in our recovery program. But violent injury is a structural disease. Our patients come in with experiences of poverty, exposure to racism (including in health care settings), limited education and employment opportunities, and more. The experience of injury can compound preexisting trauma,” says Kaufman.
“Our violence recovery specialists share some background and experiences with patients, and connect with them on a level that clinicians rarely can. They provide a receptive ear and service connections that can extend for months after a hospitalization.”
Kaufman’s research is focused on solutions and a healthier future. “I’m still obsessed with data sources, so we have a paper under review looking at racial disparities in fatal and nonfatal firearm injury, and a related project trying to characterize which hospitals around the country are taking care of firearm-injured patients—it’s not always the places we would expect, so this could help guide resources,” she says.
“When I think about supporting patients who have survived violent injuries, I’m really proud of what PTVRP is doing, and I’m passionate about expanding our reach. I’m also very excited about our work through our citywide collaborative that looks at the role of income support for survivors. We are part of a pilot study now and are working with the Center for Guaranteed Income Research to expand and study income support in a randomized trial.”
This story is by Julia Hinckley. Read more at Penn LDI.
