We can’t “make American children healthy again” without tackling the gun crisis

Note for readers: This newsletter discusses gun violence, a raw and tragic problem in America. It was already in progress on Wednesday when a shootout in the Evergreen High School took place in Colorado and Charlie Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University. At the beginning of this week, the Make America Healthy movement of the Trump government published a strategy to improve health and well-being of American children. The title was made healthy again with the title - you suspected - our children. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who heads the Ministry of Health and Human Services, and his colleagues focus on four important aspects of children's health: nutrition, exercise, chemical exposure and over -medication. Anyone who has heard the attitude of RFK Jr. on health and wellness is not surprised by these priorities. And the first two are pretty obvious. Overall, American children should eat healthy. And you should get more movement. But there is a blatant omission. The most common cause of death for American children and adolescents is not ultra -proiced or exposure to chemicals. It is gun violence. Yesterday's news about top -class shootings in schools in the United States are even more striking this separation. Experts believe that it is time to treat weapons in the United States as what it is: a crisis of public health. I live with my husband and two small children in London, Great Britain. We do not live in a particularly chic part of the city - in a recent ranking of the London districts from most to at least ours came with the 30th place of 33. I am worried about crimes. But I'm not worried about gun violence. That changed when I temporarily moved my family to the USA a few years ago. We rented the apartment on the ground floor of a beautiful house in Cambridge, Massachusetts-a beautiful area with good schools, pastel-colored houses and fluffy rabbits that jump around. Only after we had moved in did my landlord told me that he had weapons in the basement. My daughter joined the kindergarten of a local school that specializes in music and we took her younger sister with us to watch the children songs about friendship. Everything was so heartwarming - until we noticed the school security officer at the entrance to a weapon. Later in the year I received an e -mail warning from the superintendent of the Cambridge Public Schools. "This afternoon at around 1:45 a.m., a youth representative of Cambridge Police Department, which was assigned to Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, accidentally abandoned their firearm when using a rod bath at school," the news began. "The school day was not disturbed." Among other things, this experience really brought me home the cultural differences between firearms between the USA and Great Britain (together with most other countries). For the first time I was worried about the exposure of my children towards them. I ban my children to access parts of the house. I felt guilty that my four -year -old had to learn what to do when a shooter entered her school. But they are the statistics that are most annoying. In 2023, 46,728 people in the United States died of gun violence, as was published in June by John's Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This includes both murders and suicides, and it breaks an average of 128 deaths per day. The majority of those who die from arms are adults. But the numbers for children are also sick. In 2023, 2,566 young people died of gun violence. Of these were 234 under 10 years. The mortality rates in children have more than doubled since 2013. Firearms are involved in more deaths for children than cancer or car accidents. Many other children survive gun violence with non-fatal-but often life-changing in the injuries. And the effects are beyond those who are physically injured. Witness of gun violence or shots can understandably cause fear, sadness and distress. It is worth taking into account when you consider that 434 shootings in the United States have been written since Columbine in 1999. The Washington Post estimates that 397,000 students experienced gun violence at school during this time. Another shootout in the school took place on Wednesday at the Evergreen High School in Colorado and added this total amount. "Indirectly the gun violence. The Maha states that" American youth is exposed to a psychological health crisis "that" suicide droppings died in 10 to 24-year-olds from 2007 to 2021 by 62% and that "suicide is the most common cause of death in teenagers aged 15 to 19 today". What does not say is that about half of these suicides are concerned. "If you add all of these dimensions, [weapons] is a very big problem of public health," says Webster. Researchers who study weapons have been saying the same thing for years. And in 2024 the US general surgeon Vivek Murthy declared it to a public health crisis. "We do not have to subject our children to the continuing horror of violence for firearms in America," said Murthy in an explanation at that time. Instead, we should tackle the problem based on an approach to public health. Part of this approach is to identify who is at great risk and offers support for the risk of the risk, says Webster. Young men who live in poor communities usually have the highest risk of gun violence, as well as those who experience crisis or turbulence. The attempt to convey conflicts or limit access to firearms can even temporarily help reduce the incidence of gun violence, he says. There is also an element of social infection, adds webster. Shooting creates more shooting. He compares it to the outbreak of an infectious disease. "When more people are vaccinated, the infection rates will fall," he says. "Almost exactly the same happens with gun violence." However, the existing efforts are already threatened. The Trump administration has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars of grants for organizations that work to reduce gun violence. Webster believes that the Maha "missed" the brand when it comes to health and well -being of children in the USA. "This document is almost the opposite of how many people think in public healthcare," he says. "We have to acknowledge that injuries and deaths from firearms pose a great threat to the health and security of children and adolescents." This article first appeared in the study of the weekly biotech newsletters from with Technology Review. To get it every Thursday in your inbox and first read items like this, register here.