Brady’s This is Our Lane initiative has launched an advertising campaign calling on pediatricians, primary care practitioners, and healthcare professionals to bring conversations about gun safety into patient care and the exam room. The campaign directs users to a resource guide with evidence-based best practices, conversation scripts, and tips on how to have unbiased gun safety discussions.
Brady says the effort already has achieved measurable impact, with 52 percent of pediatricians reporting they were ‘very likely’ to ask their patients about how they handle or store firearms after exposure to the ad campaign. The number of pediatricians who identified firearm safety as an essential public health issue jumped from 29% to 54% after exposure to the ad campaign, Brady says.
Nearly 4.6 million children across the country live in a home with an unlocked firearm. Eight children are unintentionally injured or killed due to family fire every day, contributing to guns as the leading cause of death for children and teens in America. Despite research showing that patients and families who receive safe storage counseling from their physicians are three times more likely to make decisions to store guns safely, over half of clinicians report that they avoid discussing firearm access and safety with patients.
