Prevention of Firearm Violence Through Specific Types of Community-based Programming: An Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma Evidence-based Review

The purpose of this review was to provide an evidence based recommendation for community based programs to mitigate gun violence, from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST). Firearm Injury leads to more than 40,000 annual deaths and more than 115,000 injuries annually in the United States. Communities have adopted culturally relevant strategies to mitigate gun related injury and death. Two such strategies are gun buyback programs and community based violence prevention programs. The Injury Control and Violence Prevention Committee of EAST developed PICO questions and performed a comprehensive literature and gray web search. Using GRADE methodology, they reviewed and graded the literature and provided consensus recommendations informed by the literature. A total of 19 studies were included for analysis of gun buyback programs. Twenty-six studies were reviewed for analysis for community-based violence prevention programs. Gray literature was added to the discussion of PICO questions from selected websites. A conditional recommendation is made for the implementation of community based gun buyback programs and a conditional recommendation for community based violence prevention programs, with special emphasis on cultural appropriateness and community input. Gun Violence may be mitigated by community based efforts, such as gun buybacks or violence prevention programs. These programs come with caveats, notably community cultural relevance and proper support and funding from local leadership. Review, Decision, level III.