WIP 30 - Locked and Loaded for Learning? Exploring Parent and Student Perspectives on Firearm Safety Curriculum

Publication Number: WIP 30.7382

Hanh nguyen, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, Redwood City, CA, United States; Vivien Sun, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States; Helene Nepomuceno, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, Palo Alto, CA, United States; Stephanie Chao, Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States; Meagan Peterson, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States; Enrique Herrera Castaneda, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, United States; Elena Harnish, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States; Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States

Background: Since 2019, firearms have been the leading cause of death among children in the U.S. Despite over 1500 federal and state laws regulating firearm possession, firearm ownership remains high with an estimated 7% of U.S. children living in homes where a firearm is improperly stored. Prior primary prevention efforts to reduce pediatric firearm injuries include school-based firearm safety programs such as “Eddie Eagle” and “H.E.R.O”; however, there is limited data about their long-term efficacy and how students and parents feel about these programs.

Objective: To explore parents’ and high-school students’ knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives regarding firearm safety, and their desired educational content and format for a school-based firearm safety curriculum.

Design/Methods: This is an IRB-approved qualitative study using semi-structured focus groups. Participants will be recruited via convenience sampling through public school networks between March 2024 and November 2024. Focus group guides were developed by expert consensus and incorporated the Health Belief Model of behavior change. Between April and August 2024, we conducted 9 semi-structured, 90-minute focus groups and dyadic interviews via Zoom with 24 parents and 7 high-school students. Focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Two investigators independently open-coded transcripts from 2 parent focus groups and 2 student focus groups. Codes were reconciled iteratively to develop a codebook, which was applied to all completed focus groups, and will be used to code additional student focus groups that we plan to conduct by the end of November 2024. We are targeting a minimum of 5 additional students to achieve a more balanced representation of the study population. We will perform a thematic analysis of the focus group discussions inductively, which we plan to complete by February 2025.