Restore Funds & Staff to CDC Injury Center and Division of Violence Prevention

Today I take pen in hand to write and urge you to act to restore the CDC’s Injury Center and its critically important Division of Violence Prevention. These critical teams were responsible for collecting data, funding research, and implementing programs aimed at reducing gun deaths and injuries. Without their expertise and resources, our nation will be left blind to the realities of this public health crisis. We simply cannot afford to lose hard-won ground in addressing this crisis. Experts and the former administrator of the division, James Mercy have said the layoffs could cripple the administration of federal gun violence research funding, which only resumed in 2019 only after a long-fought battle in Congress that ended a decades-long freeze on such studies. The CDC layoffs have decimated staff working on vital initiatives like the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) database tracking gun violence metrics. Losing oversight of this detailed nationwide data will hamper the ability to craft evidence-based policies and gauge the effectiveness of prevention efforts. Furthermore, the cuts risk abandoning federally funded research grants after decades of stifled funding in this field. Dismantling these programs represents a significant setback in our understanding and response to the gun violence epidemic. Worse, the sabotage inflicted on other agencies seems destined to occur here, in this division. These are expensive software and analytical programs, paid for by the taxpayer. It’s use is to our public benefit, for example: Researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for example, used the CDC WONDER Database to determine that firearms are now the leading cause of death for American children! David Hemenway, a long time injury prevention researcher at Harvard, has noted: “If they screw up all the data systems, you can’t trust anything. That would be the worst — like saying science and social science don’t matter at all.” Therefore, I urge you to oppose these reckless cuts that undermine public safety. Robust federal support for data collection, research, and prevention programs is essential to saving lives and healing communities torn apart by gun violence. Thank you for your attention to this matter.