Kerri Raissian has been appointed to the Governor’s Commission on Community Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention.
“I’m very excited and honored to be at the table to be able to learn from and work with the others on the Commission,” Raissian says.
Raissian is an associate professor of public policy and director of the UConn ARMS Center (Advancing Research, Methods, and Scholarship for Gun Injury Prevention). ARMS is housed within the Institute of Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP) and is affiliated with the School of Public Policy.
In 2021, 128 people in Connecticut died by gun violence and 458 others were injured according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The Commission was established through a public act the Connecticut General Assembly passed and Gov. Ned Lamont signed into law earlier this year.
The Commission contains 22 members representing various facets of community gun violence in Connecticut including healthcare providers, community activists and organizers, police, and policy makers.
The goal of this Commission is to provide the Commissioner of Public Health with an overview of community gun violence in the state and develop evidence-based, community-focused approaches to reducing community gun violence.
The Commission is tasked with creating and submitting a report to the legislative committee by Jan. 1, 2023.
Raissian will bring her expertise as a gun violence researcher to help determine what kind of data to collect, what research designs to use, and how to interpret data on gun violence and prevention policies.
“[We’re going] to really look at this problem from a number of levels and harness the collective expertise and experience of people in Connecticut so we can develop forward-looking solutions,” Raissian says.
