Convocation: David Hemenway

"Private Guns, Public Health." Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, David Hemenway also serves as the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. The injury center is the coordinating center for the National Violent Injury Statistics System whose goal is to help improve available data on suicide and homicide. In the United States, almost 80 people per day are killed with guns. Yet comparatively little research has been directed toward understanding and reducing gun injuries. Hemenway is studying the effects of gun carrying; how guns are stored and whether training can improve storage practices; the external costs and benefits of gun ownership; the use of guns in self-defense; gun use among adolescents; guns on college campuses; the relationship between gun prevalence and homicide, suicide and unintentional gun deaths; and the effects of changes in the legal drinking age on youth violence. His book "Private Guns, Public Health" demonstrates how research findings on gun accidents, suicides, and crimes can, in a thoughtful and apolitical way, illuminate a significant social issue.