Local government expenditures as structural determinants of racial and ethnic disparities in firearm homicides

Project Summary/Abstract Firearm violence exacts a devastating toll in the United States (US), with dramatically disproportionate impacts on marginalized Black and Latiné communities. To date, public investments to address this issue predominantly fund criminalization strategies with intensive policing and mass incarceration, but this has not

consistently or substantially reduced firearm homicide rates. A promising alternative approach focuses on investing in meeting the essential needs of the communities that suffer from high levels of firearm violence, like housing, youth programming, and a well-maintained built environment. While these interventions have

demonstrated success in reducing firearm violence, they have been limited to particular neighborhoods or smaller geographic areas. Evaluations of investments to strengthen support services on a greater scale are

limited by a lack of availability of robust data. To fill that gap, this project will use public available local budgets to build a detailed, longitudinal database of local funding expenditures for the carceral system and support services for the 50 most populous cities from 2010-2022 (Aim 1a). The database will then be used to

categorize cities into groups based on their trajectories in the ratio of total support service funding to total carceral funding per 100,000 residents, and explore city-level predictors of these groups (Aim 1b). In Aim 2, the database will be used along with outcome and covariable data from the City Health Dashboard and various

public sources to estimate the changes in racial and ethnic disparities in firearm homicides associated with increasing levels of funding allocations for (1) housing, (2) financial support, (3) family support, and (4) community-focused public safety services; and decreasing funding levels for the carceral system. This

research is urgently needed as local policymakers are actively seeking evidence-based solutions to reduce inequities in community violence. The research plan is complemented by an excellent interdisciplinary mentorship team and training plan to develop strong foundations in the theoretical understanding of community

violence, practical knowledge of local budgetary processes, empirical knowledge of the effect of local funding expenditures on health outcomes, advanced causal inference methods for longitudinal policy evaluation, and communication skills for dissemination to diverse stakeholders. Building on the applicant’s background as a

surgical trainee entering the field of trauma surgery, the combined research and training plan will prepare the applicant to successfully pursue a career augmenting clinical care of victims of violence with research to facilitate structural interventions that prevent interpersonal violence from occurring in the first place. It will also

position him as a thought-leader and leader of empirical science on local funding as a structural determinant of health.