Firearms, Intimate Partner Violence, and Suicide

Program

NCGVR webinars are designed to bridge the gap between research and policy, providing actionable insights from recently completed research funded by NCGVR. In this webinar, we explore research on the deadly nexus of intimate partner violence (IPV), firearms and suicide.

In the first of three presentations, Julia Kafka, Ph.D., MPH, provides a ground-breaking new assessment of IPV’s contribution to violent deaths in the United States. This study reveals that that almost 10 percent of homicides, police shootings and suicides can be linked to IPV dynamics. In the second presentation, Evan Goldstein, Ph.D., MPP, describes leveraging text and tools from artificial intelligence to identify the circumstances that often precede firearm suicides among women. In the third presentation, Tami Sullivan, Ph.D, examines the use of threats of firearm violence to coerce and intimidate women, highlighting the frequency with which women facing IPV experience these threats and the risk factors associated with them.

Presenters

Julie Kafka: Intimate Partner Violence and Subsequent Violent Deaths

Julie M Kafka, Ph.D, MPH is a postdoctoral scholar with the Firearm Injury and Policy Research Program at the University of Washington. Her research is dedicated to the prevention and interruption of intimate partner violence, with a focus on policy implementation and the role of firearms in violence escalation. The goal of her work is to conduct applied research that can help support victim-survivors while also addressing abusive behaviors by the people who perpetrate harm. Dr. Kafka will be transitioning to work as an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado’s Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative in fall 2024.

NCGVR-funded project: Intimate Partner Violence and Firearm Suicide

Evan Goldstein: Characterizing Female Firearm Suicide Circumstances: Leveraging Text, Natural Language Processing, and Large Language Models

Evan V. Goldstein, Ph.D, MPP, is an Assistant Professor (tenure track) at the University of Utah’s Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. A health policy researcher and population health scientist, much of Dr. Goldstein’s research focuses on the effects of public policy and socioeconomic factors on suicide death—especially suicide deaths involving firearms—in communities that are underserved and underrepresented in our society and science. Dr. Goldstein’s research and commentary have been published in Health Affairs, Health Affairs Forefront, Psychiatric Services, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Medical Care, and other high-impact journals. Additionally, his research has been funded through a career development award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and he serves as a Co-PI, Site PI, or Co-I on several foundation and NIH-funded projects. In a previous career, Dr. Goldstein was an administrator in community health care settings, overseeing community engagement, government affairs, and non-clinical program operations for a Federally Qualified Health Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

NCGVR-funded project: Engaging Machine Learning and Data Linkage to Understand Female Suicide

Tami P. Sullivan: Intimate Partner Violence and Firearm Threats

Tami P. Sullivan, Ph.D, is Professor at the Yale University School of Medicine and in the Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health. Dr. Sullivan's program of research is centered on individual- and system-level factors that affect the wellbeing of victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), with specific attention to daily processes and micro-longitudinal designs. At the individual level, Dr. Sullivan's work advances understanding of the relationships among IPV and its highly prevalent negative outcomes such as mental health and substance use problems, to inform the development of preventive interventions that promote safety and resilience. At the systems-level, she conducts IPV research and evaluation within the criminal justice and other service systems. She studies the impact of the system’s response on victims’ wellbeing including the ways in which it promotes or impedes victims’ safety, recovery and resilience. Dr. Sullivan is a licensed psychologist who has extensive clinical experience with victims and offenders of IPV, providing services in a range of settings from community programs, dual diagnosis programs, inpatient settings, and outpatient clinics to domestic violence shelters, transitional living programs, and community programs.

NCGVR-funded project: Advancing Gun Policy: Linking Multi-Source Data to Develop Micro-Longitudinal Trajectories of Domestic Violence Offenders’ Gun Use and Impact on Victims