Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) Innovation Accelerator

Firearm Injury Prevention

Advancing Pediatric Firearm Safety Counseling Through Evidence-Based Virtual Reality Training

Firearm Injury is the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. Clinician counseling on secure firearm storage during clinical visits is an important safety intervention to prevent children and adolescents from accessing household firearms. Our team has leveraged our experience designing and implementing virtual reality training and prevention curricula to partner with the Massachusetts General Hospital Gun Violence Prevention Center to develop a novel training curricula for clinicians for gaining skills on screening for and counseling on secure firearm storage.

Our team has conducted and published our work developing the curriculum in partnership with caregiver stakeholders, conducting formal usability and acceptability testing, and measuring effectiveness to enhance counseling behaviors in simulated encounters.

This work led to a partnership with the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) to develop a first-of-it's kind Firearm Injury Prevention: Medical Student Education Program. Our team secured foundation funding to bring this training to medical schools across the country, allowing medical students to participate in this scaffolded experiential simulation experience to practice these vital skills and increase the likelihood of engaging in these crucial conversations with patients and families.

An Automated Virtual Reality Intervention to Enhance Firearm Safety Counseling in Pediatrics

Our team is actively developing and testing an automated version of the Firearm Safety training that uses artificial intelligence to control the virtual character responses and generate individualized feedback for participants. This innovation will be crucial to further scale access to this impactful training. 

Collaborate With Us

We are actively seeking collaborators to expand our Firearm Injury Prevention efforts through training and research. For more information Contact Us.