McKay receives Kaiser Permanente grant for gun violence research
The Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education has awarded Sandra McKay, MD, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, with a grant to further gun violence research and interventions.
McKay received a $60,000 Category 1 grant designed to build the capacity of organizations and individuals involved in gun violence prevention to engage in research activities.
The grant will supplement the Houston Hospital Violence Intervention Program, which collaborates with community partners The Forgotten Third and the Health Equity Collective to develop a robust community advisory board to fully understand the scope and impact of gun violence in the Greater Houston Area.
“We will identify factors that will influence the formation of our upcoming HVIP, and we will take these findings and disseminate them in a shared conference in the next year,” McKay said. “This funding will be essential to the formation of our HIVP as we bring the community together to create a program that will truly impact the landscape of community violence.”
The HVIP program aims to reduce the occurrence of repeat violent events and determine the impact of the program on violent re-injury and mental and behavioral health while assessing the impact of the program on several disparities in those impacted by firearm violence injury and identifying the predictors of implementation success.
Apart from her duties at McGovern Medical School, McKay is also the Huffington Fellow in Child Health Policy at the Baker Institute at Rice University and is the principal investigator for the Injury Free Coalition for Kids of Houston.
In total, the center awarded $2.25 million to 10 projects. Since its inception in 2022, it has awarded nearly $7 million to researchers, community-based organizations, and national organizations to advance evidence for preventive and clinical interventions that reduce the incidence and effects of community gun violence and firearm suicide.
“We know that more insightful and meaningful research emerges when academic institutions partner with and center the wisdom of the most impacted communities,” said Fatimah Loren Dreier, executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education. “These grants play an essential role in preventing gun violence by supporting community-led research and demonstrating that equitable grant-making is possible.”
McKay was promoted to Division Chief of Community and General Pediatrics on July 1 and elected to the McGovern Medical School Academy of Master Educators. Additionally, she was recently featured in an ABC News article about gun storage.