Gentrification, gun violence, and disparities in access to care for shooting victims

Gentrification is associated with redistribution of shootings but impacts on access to care are unknown. We evaluate the association of gentrification with shooting rates, transport times, and survival in Boston. Gentrification was defined using income, housing, and educational attainment from the 2010–2020 census. Shootings and hospitals were geocoded into census tracts and transport times were estimated. Poisson regression was applied to shooting and fatality rates, and Kruskal-Wallis testing to transport times. 57 tracts (33 ​%) were eligible to gentrify and 11 (19 ​%) gentrified. There were 2311 shootings, with lower rates in gentrifying tracts (β −0.69, 95 ​% CI -0.93, −0.45) but no differences in fatalities. Transport times were longer in non-gentrifying (median 11.71, IQR 5.82–15.51) than gentrifying tracts (median 7.10, IQR 7.08–10.92), (p ​