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Thirty years later, Dr. Alex Garza still remembers the young African-American girl from Kansas City. It was a hot summer night, and her home lacked air conditioning, so she came downstairs to try to sleep on the couch.
But a drive-by shooting sent a bullet crashing through her living room window, killing her. Dr. Garza, then a young paramedic, shared the still-vivid memory of being called to the scene. It was too late.
Garza, now the Chief Community Health Officer of SSM Health, recently shared those recollections at the Archdiocese of St. Louis’ summit, “Addressing Gun Violence: Promoting a Culture of Life.”
“Firearm violence is the epidemic in plain sight, and like many epidemics (or pandemics), it is measured in grim statistics,” he told the crowd gathered at the Cardinal Rigali Center in Shrewsbury, Missouri. “Just like an epidemic or pandemic, it affects more than just the victim. It affects families, neighborhoods, communities and cities. It ripples through the people that touch this epidemic, that treat the victim and everything from the family all the way up to the economic opportunities for the region.”
Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski also spoke.
"We are a church that promotes hope—hope in Jesus Christ, and we see the despair of gun violence,” he said. “We wanted to bring the light of hope to the darkness of gun violence— to see how we can help to transform our society.”
Over the past 10 years, Garza noted, the death rate due to firearms has increased close to 40% across the United States. He outlined three facts that need to be addressed.
- Firearm injuries and deaths are a public health problem.
- They disproportionately affect the young, black and poor.
- Given the above, the solutions have to be a “whole of community” approach.
“Health care,” Garza added, “only contributes to about 20% of a person’s health. The rest are the so-called ‘social determinants of health,’ the things outside of the four walls of the hospital or clinic. Things like education, economic opportunity, poor built environment, discrimination, pollution and other things that influence health outside of the few moments they spend in the hospital or doctor’s office.“
Garza, the archbishop and other speakers urged the community to come together to address the epidemic of gun violence.
Learn more about SSM Health's involvement within the communities in which we serve.
