The academic and economic benefits of school spending are well-established, but focusing on these outcomes may underestimate the full social benefits of school spending. Recent increases in U.S. child mortality are driven by injuries and raise questions about what types of social investments could reduce child deaths. We use close school district…

While firearm-related injuries are the leading cause of death among US children between 1-18, and account for nearly half of suicides among young people, public health experts continue to struggle in identifying efficacious mechanisms to reduce and prevent firearm access for children. Currently 4.8 million children live in a home with a loaded and…

Evidence suggests increased mortality rates among autistic individuals. However, risks of mortality, including natural-cause, suicide, and accident mortalities, among autistic individuals remain unclear. Among the entire Taiwanese population (N = 29,253,529), between 2003 and 2017, 45,398 autistic individuals were identified and 1:4 matched to…

Statement of Purpose: Pediatric firearm access is a significant risk factor for unintentional injury and suicide. This study investigated parents' perspectives on an adapted firearm safety program, "S.A.F.E. Firearm," to ensure acceptability and optimize effectiveness prior to the launch of an upcoming hybrid effectiveness-implementation…

This study uses open source information to examine school shootings in the United States for the 1990-2016 period. We innovatively created a national-level database to address the gaps in existing research and identified 652 school shootings. These shootings included 473 intentional shootings (encompassing 354 with known offenders and 119 with…

In addition to the potential loss of life, school shootings can evoke feelings of profound fear and anxiety that disturb a community's sense of safety and security. Questions have been raised about whether schools' approaches to addressing student behavior are a factor in school shootings. These approaches include discipline that removes the…

This pilot study from self-selected institutions of higher education provides an estimate of the causes and rates of mortality among college students between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. One hundred fifty-seven 4-year colleges participated in an online survey of student deaths during one academic year. A total of 254 deaths were reported. The…

This study examined patterns of making meaning among 155 parents whose children died from a variety of violent and non-violent causes. Findings indicated 53% of violent loss survivors could not make sense of their loss, as compared to 32% of non-violent loss survivors. Overall, there was overlap in sense-making strategies across different causes…

This article describes an 8-week, curriculum-based traumatic death support group program that is offered at Bo's Place, a grief and bereavement center in Houston, Texas. The program was implemented in 2006 in an effort to help family members who had experienced a death in the family by suicide, murder, accident, or sudden medical problem. The…

Relatively little is known about legal entanglements and suicide risk. This matched case-control study estimated the risk of suicide associated with legal strains using online court archives, a novel source of exposure data. Court records linked to suicide deaths (N = 315), controls (N = 630), and unintentional injury and poisoning deaths (N =…

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of sudden parental bereavement on subsequent attainment of developmental competencies. This longitudinal study reports on 126 youth bereaved by sudden parental death (suicide, accident, or natural death) and 116 demographically similar nonbereaved controls assessed at 9, 21, 33, and 62 months after…

Context: Urban-rural disparity is an important issue for injury control in China. Details of the urban-rural disparities in fatal injuries have not been analyzed. Purpose: To target key injury causes that most contribute to the urban-rural disparity, we decomposed total urban-rural differences in 2006 injury mortality by gender, age, and cause.…

Objective: This retrospective cohort study examined the risk for suicide, psychiatric hospitalization, and violent criminal convictions among offspring of parents who died from suicide, accidents, and other causes. Method: Population-based data from multiple Swedish national registers were linked from 1969 to 2004. Participants were 44,397…

This paper is part of an on-going project to examine outdoor education related deaths in Australia since 1960. It records eleven incidents not included in previous papers in this series. A total of 14 students or staff died in the incidents. The paper reviews the incidents and identifies what further lessons can be learned about fatality…

Study of the continental United States showed that an index of "southernness" was associated with the homicide rate but not with the suicide rate. However, the rate of suicide by firearms and the rate of lethal accidents with firearms were both associated with this index of southernness. (Author/KS)