Project

Culture, Longitudinal Patterns, and Safety Promotion of Handgun Carrying Among Rural Adolescents: Implications for Injury Prevention

Project Description

This project aims to identify the contexts, antecedents, and consequences of handgun carrying among adolescents who live in rural communities in order to inform culturally appropriate and community-specific interventions. The study will focus on communities where high levels of firearm access and mortality, cultural influences, attitudes, and risks associated with youth handgun carrying are understudied and underserved.

The project will use existing data and collect new data from rural adolescents to:

• Identify opportunities and barriers in firearm injury prevention by improving our understanding of the cultural context of handgun carrying among rural adolescents.
• Determine specific developmentally salient points of intervention by characterizing patterns of handgun carrying in rural communities from early adolescence to young adulthood.
• Examine individual and social-developmental factors that distinguish patterns of handgun carrying in rural communities from early adolescence to young adulthood.
• Test the effect of the Communities That Care prevention system on developmental patterns of handgun carrying among adolescents living in rural communities.

The goal of this study is to provide actionable evidence for informing strategies that can prevent firearm-related injury and promote safety among adolescents in rural communities.

The work will be conducted through a collaboration with investigators from the UW’s School of Public Health, the Social Development Research Group, Washington State University, Arizona State University, and Seattle Children’s Research Institute.