The Need for Comprehensive School Safety Policy

Despite the relative rarity of firearm-related violence and injury in U.S. schools, the salience of school shooting events can influence local-, state-, and even federal-level school safety policy. I discuss concerns related to such direction, including: 1) a lack of evidence-based strategies to prevent firearm injury in schools; 2) the disproportionate burden of students exposed to 'school hardening' strategies; and 3) student needs overshadowed by a focus on extreme violence.

BIO

Dr. Heinze's research investigates how schools influence disparities in violence and other risk outcomes from an ecological perspective that includes individual, interpersonal, and contextual influences on development. He is particularly interested in structural features of school context and policy that perpetuate inequity in violence and firearm outcomes, but also how these institutions can serve as a setting for intervention.

Dr. Heinze is currently an associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior & Health Equity in the School of Public Health and holds an appointment with the Combined Program in Education and Psychology. He completed his PhD in education psychology from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 2011. He is the Director of the National Center for School Safety, the faculty lead for Public Health IDEAS for Preventing Firearm Injury, and principal investigator of the Healthy Minds Study.

• education policy
• education policy initiative