Guest post from Donna Barnes

Chronic disease prevention presents an obvious opportunity for health care reform. The platforms of both Senators McCain and Obama note the potential savings—in dollars and lives—that can result from preventing chronic illnesses. However, by focusing exclusively on chronic disease, we miss an opportunity for prevention of a common cause of death that takes as many lives as Alzheimer’s disease and causes ripples throughout American families and communities.

What I am talking about here is violent death—among others, homicide, suicide, child abuse, and domestic violence that takes lives. Recognizing the growing damage from violent death and recognizing that it can be prevented—just like countless medical conditions—is critical.

On both sides of the political aisle, of course, widespread agreement exists that billions of dollars could be saved through wellness programs and better management of chronic diseases. As a nation, we understand the relationship between conditions like cardiovascular disease and the factors—overeating, inactivity, excess weight, smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol—that place people at risk for it.

Risk factors are no less important for understanding the violent deaths that claim the lives of more than 50,000 US citizens a year. In addition, while death from any cause is tragic, violent deaths often scar survivors and can threaten an entire community’s sense of well-being.

But we understand little about the risk factors for violent death. For instance, some of the questions for which we don’t have answers include:

-  What percentage of US women killed in domestic violence have restraining orders against their attackers?
- How often does a child die from abuse somewhere in the country and under what circumstances?
- What percent of youth suicide victims are intoxicated at the time of death?

Preventing violent death depends on understanding the factors that cause it. A program from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can provide much-needed national level data. The National Violent Death Reporting System, or NVDRS, systematically gathers, links, and analyzes violent death data from many difference sources, including death certificates, medical examiner reports, data from crime labs, law enforcement records, and information from social agencies. By gathering and analyzing data from these different perspectives, the NVDRS can increase our understanding of the circumstances surrounding violent deaths and lead public health officials to develop and implement targeted violent death prevention programs.

Current federal funding levels support data collection from only 17 states. An additional $4 million in funding for FY 2009 would allow more than half the states to participate. While every federal expenditure will no doubt come under close scrutiny, educating ourselves about risk factors for violent death is a sound investment in our future.

Congress must provide this funding. Preventing violent deaths is just as much a part of “prevention” as preventing deaths from medical conditions.

–

DONNA HOLLAND BARNES, Ph.D. is a Research Associate and Instructor at Howard University’s Psychiatry Department in Washington, D.C. where she teaches suicide risk management to residents and third year medical students. She also conducts research on families who have lost someone to suicide.  She is currently the recipient of a $450,000 campus grant for suicide prevention from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.  Barnes is co-founder and President of the National Organization for People of Color against Suicide (NOPCAS) and a founding member of the National Council for Suicide Prevention (NCSP). She has served on several national and local committees that pertained to suicidal behavior and appears on radio talk shows and in national magazines frequently on the subject of suicide.  Dr. Barnes was an awardee for the Eli Lilly Welcome Back Award for her distinguished work in communities of color in 2006.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 9:46 am and is filed under Guest Posts, Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.