Safe & Sound: Forum on Gun Violence 

Women’s Voices, in partnership with Vision for Children at Risk, will be hosting a forum on April 9 that is open to the public and free of charge concerning gun violence as a public health problem  and the strategies we can implement to protect children from gun violence. Every day, 8 children in America lose their lives to gun violence with more than 35,000 children and teens in Missouri living in homes with guns that are loaded and unlocked, and children of color in St. Louis are dying at among the highest rates in our country.  The purpose of the forum is to address gun violence as a public health issue affecting all of our children and to help provide practical steps to protecting children in our communities.

James Mercy, PhD, a consultant in the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta will be the keynote speaker, addressing the prevention of firearm injuries through a public health scope. The forum will also include a panel of St. Louis area experts discussing how we can address gun violence towards children in our communities. Panelists will be David M. Jaffe, M.D., medical director of emergency services at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and president of the Academic Pediatric Assn.; Lt. Janice Bockstruck, 
who works in the juvenile division at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department; Tiffany Anderson, Ed.D., superintendent of schools in the Jennings School District, and Saaid Khojasteh, M.D., a specialist in adolescent psychiatry who directs the department of psychiatry at St. Joseph Health Centers in St. Charles and Wentzville. The forum will also include a conversation with families who have been affected by gun violence, led by James Clark
of Better Family Life.