8th Annual President’ s Breakfast Highlights a Focus on Gun Violence and Mental Health( continued)
Carl McLaney, MPA, Vice President of Administration and Infrastructure; Dr. Gail Washington, Dean of the Mervyn M. Dymally School of Nursing; Dr. Jimmy Hara, Core Faculty in the College of Medicine Department of Family Medicine; Kaiser Permanente, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, ECC Insurance Brokers, Anderson-Barker, Elaine Nesbit of ENA Architects, and Dan Rosenfeld.
California State Attorney General Rob Bonta gave a brief yet insightful account of the work that his office has undertaken on behalf of stemming gun violence. In doing so, he set the table for the panelists to follow.
Mr. Bonta’ s remarks centered around his personal perspective as both a lawmaker as well as being the father of three children. He noted that the US has seen an ocean of gun violence with over 70 mass shootings in recent years. 111 people are shot and killed in America every day. He applauded the call for an accelerated mental health approach to the gun violence issue.
Research and data collection are essential to this approach. He encouraged developing an active campaign of widespread public awareness in collaboration with partners ranging from local elected officials to supporters at the federal level.
Facts about the manner of gun violence yield a grisly outlook. Two-thirds of gun violence occurs within families. People with mental health issues most often tend to be victims rather than perpetrators. In closing, he noted that this challenge can be successfully confronted with widespread public support.
Atty. General Bonta’ s remarks were an effective overture to the panel discussion that followed. The panel was moderated by COM Dean Deborah Prothrow-Stith, who has published nearly a dozen books and myriad papers and monographs on violence-related issues.
The panel included a trio of speakers well-vested in the subject matter. Dr. Garen Wintermute is a physician and a Distinguished Professor at UC Davis, where he is founding director of the Violence Prevention Research Program and of the California Firearm Violence Research
Center, the nation’ s first publicly funded research center in this field.
Fernando Rejón is Executive Director of the Urban Peace Institute and a leading community-based advocate for ending gun violence. The Urban Peace Institute works to shape and strengthen violence reduction in the most violence-impacted communities in the nation. He has trained thousands of community leaders to utilize nontraditional strategies of violence prevention.
Chuck D,( birth name Carlton D. Ridenhour), first gained international notoriety as the founder-frontman of Public Enemy- creators of such memorable explorations as Fight the Power and 911 is a Joke. He has since immersed himself in many projects that reflect the need to take a hard look at the root causes of unrest and disaffection with established institutions in urban communities.
Chuck D is the co-author with Shepard Fairey of This Day in Rap and Hip-Hop History( 2017); and authored Livin’ Loud: ARTitaton, released in February of this year. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Public Enemy in 2013. He is a Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate of Adelphi University on Long Island, and received an honorary doctorate from the institution, also in 2013.
In her opening remarks Dean Prothrow-Stith reflected on the fact that three times more people in the US are killed than in comparable nations. On the average, a California resident is killed every three hours.
Mr. Rejón noted how common gun violence is experienced in the urban setting, with suicide occurring at an alarming rate. He felt that the problem has been ignored for many years, and mass shootings are a regular occurrence. He cited unforeseen violence as prevalent and an ongoing threat to community safety.
Dr. Wintermute cited gun violence at the current level as a public emergency. For 40-plus years, the problem has largely been ignored. In the majority of cases, people die at the specific geographic location where they are shot. The primary strategy that a mental health campaign can support is to keep people from being shot in the first place. In 2019-20, alongside the emergence of the COVID-19 epidemic, more and more gun violence incidents were reported. By 2022, there was a significant increase in firearm possession.
Today, there are 50,000 deaths per year from firearm violence, with hundreds of thousands of lives affected. 1 in every 8 people in America know someone who has
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 4