Development of an interactive dashboard for gun violence pattern analysis and intervention design at the local level

• Published in: JAMIA open Vol. 6; no. 4; p. ooad105
• Main Authors: Senior, Rashaud, Pickett, Lisa, Stirling, Andrew, Dash, Shwetha, Gorgone, Patti, Durst, Georgina, Jones, Debra, Shannon, Richard, Bhavsar, Nrupen A, Bedoya, Armando
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Oxford University Press 01.12.2023
• Subjects: Case Report; social determinants of health; gun violence; electronic health record; dashboard analysis
• ISSN: 2574-2531; 2574-2531
• DOI: 10.1093/jamiaopen/ooad105

Introduction Gun violence remains a concerning and persistent issue in our country. Novel dashboards may integrate and summarize important clinical and non-clinical data that can inform targeted interventions to address the underlying causes of gun violence. Methods Data from various clinical and non-clinical sources were sourced, cleaned, and integrated into a customizable dashboard that summarizes and provides insight into the underlying factors that impact local gun violence episodes. Results The dashboards contained data from 7786 encounters and 1152 distinct patients from our Emergency Department’s Trauma Registry with various patterns noted by the team. A multidisciplinary executive team, including subject matter experts in community-based interventions, epidemiology, and social sciences, was formed to design targeted interventions based on these observations. Conclusion Targeted interventions to reduce gun violence require a multimodal data sourcing and standardization approach, the inclusion of neighborhood-level data, and a dedicated multidisciplinary team to act on the generated insights. Lay Summary Gun violence remains a concerning and ongoing issue in our country with many interrelated issues creating complex associations for what leads to it. We developed a process to generate customizable dashboards to help identify these associations and potential causes, and to support interventions targeting them in our area. We also implemented processes for automation, to improve the sources and quality of our data, and to target the larger structural/historical sources of demographic disparities among local gun violence victims.