When Sexual Violence Doesn’t Make Headlines

News of violence and injustice against women consumes the headlines every day. "Liberian women battle against ‘sex for grades’ at universities." "Delhi gang rape victim’s tragic death transforms her family’s life." Stories about ". . . the plague of violence against women."

Even amidst this steady stream of astonishing wrongs, I think about every woman and girl facing violence and injustice quietly and without notice. Too many remain invisible.

Global Health Starts With Women

This week, academic leaders from around the world are coming together for the 4th annual global health conference of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health. Nearly 1,400 members of the academic community (including some 500 students) from 751 institutions in 56 countries seek to identify a multi-sector, multi-disciplinary, interprofessional approach to improving global health.

An important aspect of the conversations is that any approach to global health must start with women and girls. Taking care of women is taking care of the family which is taking care of the community which is taking care of society.

In any dialogue about social welfare and development, there is global recognition of this centrality of women. The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals aim to improve the lives of people around the world and ensure their basic human rights, particularly women’s issues, including poverty, education, maternal and infant mortality rates, and infections. The formation of UN Women and the appointment of Melanne Verveer as the U.S. ambassador for global women’s issues by President Barack Obama are indications of recognition of the vital role of healthy and educated women.

Progress and Need

But, as Ambassador Verveer wrote, “. . . we have indeed seen progress in protecting the human rights of women. . . . [but] there is no getting around the fact that progress is fragile in many places and barely measurable in others.”

Similarly, President Obama’s recent reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is an important marker both of our progress and of the continuing, deeply rooted need for attention to the health of women and girls.

As we come together this week, my partners in the Consortium of Universities for Global Health will:

• Consider novel ways to make academic institutions transforming forces in global health, expanding our moral commitment to translate knowledge

• Assemble best practices from different parts of the world. Universities are not just exporters of innovation, we are importers too.

• Share a united vision of global health, one of equity and justice, the elimination of violence, the courage to tackle world problems, and truly measurable impact.

Those are headlines I would like to see.

Now Is the Time

We are living in a world with guns. As much as I would like to change that, as would so many of us, I need to focus on what I can change – and what you and I as members of the largest group of healthcare professionals in the nation can change. I have committed to the following, and I urge you to do the same.

Encourage and conduct research on gun violence.

In a pivotal move to decrease gun violence, President Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control and other scientific agencies to research its causes and prevention. The President’s directive lifts a de facto 17-year ban on federal research on gun violence research. “We don’t benefit from ignorance,” he said in releasing his plan “Now Is the Time”. “We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.”

Dr. Therese Richmond, our leading researcher on violence, and other prominent researchers at Penn are positioned to work across disciplines to systematically build a science on lowering injury and death from gun violence.

Science can help keep people safe from injury and death by providing data and evidence for policy changes. We have a tremendously effective model in motor vehicle safety. When we learned that people were dying in car accidents, we did not get rid of all cars. Instead, with data and research findings, policies to enhance the safety of cars were implemented and continue to save lives. If we accomplished that with car crashes, we can accomplish that with gun violence. And nursing research must be front and center.

Change perceptions about gun violence.

Gun violence is a health issue and central to what we in nursing should care about. What happened in Newtown, CT, was tragic, and so is the gun violence that kills children and adults every day in every U.S. state. And, it is a hard truth, but when the victims of violence are brown and black, our society doesn’t pay as much attention, yet gun violence is the leading cause of death of African Americans ages 15 to 24.

Gun violence kills Americans in mass shootings that grab hearts and headlines, and gun violence kills Americans one by one every day on street corners and in homes. Four million Americans have been injured by guns in the past 30 years and approximately 30,000 die every year from guns. We cannot view the Newtown school shooting as an isolated event, nor should mass shootings be the only impetus toward action. Gun violence is a daily occurrence in the U.S., as sure as the rising and setting of the sun.

Become familiar with the facts.

Since we are not all experts in this area, what should we know and do? As nurses, we all should be conversant about the facts related to gun violence. Dr. Richmond is research director of the Firearm and Injury Center (FICAP) at Penn. FICAP has developed the fact sheet “10 Things Every Healthcare Professional Should Know about Firearm Injury.” It is evidence-based and a must-read for us all.

As President Obama said, “While we may not be able to prevent every senseless act of violence in this country, if there’s even one thing that we can do to reduce it, if even one life can be saved, we’ve got an obligation to try.”

When it comes to this socially complex, polarizing problem, the worst we can do is nothing. Nursing as a profession and nurses as individuals are committed to health and well-being, therefore a focus on enhancing the safety of people and eliminating all forms of violence, including gun violence, is part of our mission. Now is the time.

We as nurses care for people, families, and communities who trust us. We should employ that trust and data and facts to educate and to change perceptions about injury due to gun violence. We should act by engaging in research programs to reduce injury and death from gun violence. We have the courage to act, the expertise to conduct research, and the compassion and caring to change the world.