Tackling Gun Violence: CT DPH declares community violence a public health issue

When you think about public health, you may think about disease, epidemics or smoking. Now in Connecticut, there is another crisis: gun violence.

“In Connecticut, we know that unfortunately, we face all forms of gun violence,” Commissioner Manisha Juthani, Connecticut Department of Public Health, said.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health has now declared gun violence a public health issue. DPH is taking measures to address it, even creating a new department to specifically focus on the ongoing crisis.

Juthani said the designation of gun violence as a public health issue is important when it comes to tackling the problem.

“When you take a problem and view it through a public health lens, you actually are taking data and looking at interventions that show that the evidence base shows that it works. And then funding things accordingly. And then evaluating it,” she said.

Those are the concrete steps a brand new DPH office will be taking.

“I wanted to create an Office of Firearm Injury Prevention,” Juthani said. “Really it's in this last year that we took that initial support from the legislature to say we think the Public Health Department has a role to play in this.”

Three employees are already hired: a program leader, a health program associate and an epidemiologist. They will start in their positions within a month.

This comes after gun-related homicides in Connecticut soared during the early years of the pandemic, increasing by 36%, according to DPH.

Then in the 2022 legislative session, lawmakers appointed $2.5 million in American Rescue Plan funds to DPH, specifically to combat gun violence. In 2023, the department got another $3.9 million, but this time in state funds.

“I'm really thrilled to see the state put that investment in us,” Juthani said.

DPH is distributing that money as grants to community-based organizations working on intervention. Last year, seven organizations statewide got more than $88,000 each.

Those organizations are helping gun wound victims at hospitals, supporting young mothers at high risk of being injured, creating community for people leaving the correctional system and even taking inner-city kids to farms for therapeutic connection to animals.

“Who are the people that are affected? What are things you can do to intervene? You double down on those efforts, and you start to see things going down,” Juthani said.

Yet the commissioner said this is just the beginning. The new Office of Firearm Injury Prevention will need to address other types of gun violence going forward: including intimate partner violence, mass shootings and suicide.

Juthani said a multi-pronged approach that includes public health could lead to some solution.

“We need partners from across the spectrum, whether it be law enforcement, judicial, public health,” she said. “This isn't a problem that can be solved by public health alone. I'm just saying that public health also has a voice to bring to this.”