New Funding for Post-Doctoral Research into Extreme Risk Protection Orders

The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research has made three new awards to post-doctoral researchers examining the use and effects of extreme risk protection orders, or ERPOs.

This limited funding round was open to existing grantees to support a postdoctoral researcher. Proposals were reviewed by Ph.D.-level researchers and funding decisions were made by the collaborative’s Research Advisory Committee.

Colleen S. Walsh, Ph.D., will used advanced mixture modeling to identify subgroups within ERPO respondents based on case characteristics, using the nation’s current largest single-state ERPO dataset from Florida.

The project aims to identify distinct classes of precipitating threats and symptoms; examine associations between subgroup membership and demographic and contextual factors; and analyze how subgroups relate to court outcomes such as order duration, firearm dispossession, and co-occurring arrests, including differences by race and ethnicity.

Dr Walsh holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University and is completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University.

Julia Schleimer, PhD, MPH, will characterize substance use among ERPO respondents in Washington state, quantify spatial proximity of respondents to substance use treatment services, and examine the association of substance use with subsequent violence- and firearm-related outcomes among respondents.

Dr Schleimer is a social epidemiologist and postdoctoral scholar with the University of Washington Firearm Injury & Policy Research Program. She studies how social factors, community-based interventions, and firearm and social policies influence violence and related inequities, with an emphasis on firearm-related harm.

Laurel Sharpless, PhD, MPH, will examine how California’s firearm relinquishment laws function in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV). The project focuses on two legal mechanisms—Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs) and Domestic Violence Restraining Orders (DVROs)—which can remove firearms from individuals who pose a danger to others or themselves.

Through a one-year, mixed-methods study, the project will analyze statewide administrative data, integrate survey findings from IPV survivors, and conduct qualitative analyses of survivor and service provider perspectives. Together, these data will illuminate how firearm relinquishment laws are operationalized, the barriers survivors face in accessing protections, and the factors that shape enforcement and equity.

Dr Sharpless is a postdoctoral scholar in community health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health. She earned her doctorate in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.