EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: 1 P.M. ,
MONDAY, NOV. 7, 2005
Pediatricians at The
Safe Gun Storage Behaviors Improve
After Counseling
Nov. 7,
2005
From: Darci
Slaten, (520)
626-7217
Families who received a brief
gun-safety counseling intervention from their pediatrician were more likely to
improve their gun storage safety practices, according to a study in the November
issue of Archives of Pediatrics and
Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives
journals.
In 2001, 2,937 children and
teen-agers died as a result of gun-related injuries, according to the article.
Although gun ownership has been identified as a risk factor for homicide
and suicide in the home, a significant percentage of gun-owning parents store
their guns loaded or unlocked, substantially underestimating the risk of injury
to their children.
Conrad Clemens,
MD, associate professor of clinical pediatrics, Tom Ball, MD, associate professor of
clinical pediatrics at The
University of Arizona, and lead author Paul
S. Carbone, MD, of the Children’s Primary Care Medical Group in
Of the 2,649 parents surveyed on
visiting the clinic, 206 (7.8 percent) reported that they kept guns in their
homes; 151 completed both the baseline and follow-up questionnaire. “At
follow-up, families who received the intervention were more likely to have
improved overall gun-safety practices compared with the control group (61.6
percent vs. 26.9 percent),” the researchers report. “In those households
still with guns at follow-up, 50.9 percent of the intervention group had some
type of improvement in safe gun storage compared with 12.3 percent of the
control group. More specifically, 25 percent in the intervention group
improved the frequency of locked storage of guns compared with 4.8 percent of
those in the control group. Twenty-six percent of the intervention group
improved the use of locked storage, compared with 3.1 percent in the control
group.”
“This study provides reason to be
optimistic about the effectiveness of a brief gun-safety counseling session,
reinforced with written material and a gun lock giveaway,” the authors write.
“Overall, those gun-owning families who received the intervention were more than
twice as likely to show some type of improvement in their gun-safety practices.
More specifically, although our intervention did not appear to
significantly influence the removal of guns from the home, it did significantly
improve safe gun storage practices,” they add.
“This study provides support to the
EDITORS PLEASE NOTE
: (Arch Pediatr
Adolesc Med. 2005; 159:929-934. Available pre-embargo to the
media at www.jamamedia.org.) This study was
funded by a grant from the
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