Medical students develop new course on firearm injury prevention  

Four medical students completing their clinical education at the College of Community Health Sciences earned the MedInnovate: Primary Care Award for developing a semester-long course on firearm injury and mortality prevention.  

The award is given by the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine’s Department of Family and Community Medicine. CCHS is also a regional campus of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine.  

The MedInnovate: Primary Care award recognizes students’ creativity and thought leadership in shaping the future of health care. Student teams compete in five categories: artificial intelligence in primary care; hot topic curricula; express through art; research toolbox; and sports medicine and artificial intelligence.  

The winning students are Hunter Scott, Venu Reddy, Kendall Campbell and Colton Clayton. They worked alongside Dr. Louanne Friend, associate professor in the Department of Community Medicine and Population Health with CCHS, to create the new course.  

The firearm injury and mortality prevention course is an in-person, co-enrolled elective that teaches the science of firearm injury prevention and emphasizes how to integrate injury prevention into routine primary health care practice. Currently, the course is only available to third- and fourth-year medical students at CCHS, but students from other regional campuses (Birmingham, Huntsville and Montgomery) of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine can enroll as well. 

Dr. Fred Vars, the Robert W. Hodgkins Chairholder of Law with the UA School of Law, delivered the first lecture for the firearm injury and mortality prevention course on Jan. 26. He presented “Donna’s Law,” a bipartisan gun safety measure to help prevent gun-related suicides. This law allows individuals to confidentially and voluntarily place their name on a do-not-sell firearms list. Once registered, participants are prohibited from purchasing guns for as long as they choose to remain on the list. To date, four states have put the measure into law – Washington, Delaware, Virginia and Utah.  

During the class, Vars discussed the law’s impact and ways that health-care providers can engage in advocacy. Click here to learn more about Donna’s Law.