BeSMART Secure Storage Counseling in the Inpatient Setting
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Summary
Firearm injuries are the leading cause of death for American youth. While most of these deaths are homicides, approximately one third are suicides and 5% are unintentional shootings where a child gains access to an unsecured firearm and unintentionally pulls the trigger injuring or killing themselves or someone else. Secure firearm storage in the home has been shown to significantly reduce the risk of both unintentional shootings and intentional self-harm behavior. Additionally, approximately 75% of the guns that show up on school grounds come from the homes of youth or their family members or friends. Despite evidence that secure storage counseling delivered in the pediatric outpatient setting significantly improves secure storage behavior AND recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics to provide secure storage counseling during well child checks, rates of counseling continue to be low. The Be SMART program is aligned with the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement and recommendations and provides a scalable solution to efficient counseling in the clinical setting. However, except for one single site inpatient study, the efficacy of the Be SMART program has not been formally evaluated in the inpatient pediatric setting. By rigorously evaluating the efficacy of specific secure storage interventions like Be SMART the investigators can eventually improve counseling frequency with the goal of increasing gun safety behaviors and reducing firearm injuries and deaths in youth. The investigators hypothesize the Be SMART educational intervention, when delivered in the pediatric inpatient setting, will lead to significant improvement in the primary gun safety behavior endpoint and the secondary endpoint among both gun owners and non-gun owners when compared to control group.
Description
This is a randomized controlled trial, that will utilize computer generated randomization, 1:1 intervention to control group ratio, randomized at the individual patient level. Randomization will occur after informed consent is obtained, before initial survey is administered. The Research Assistant will use computer generated randomization. There will be 150 subjects per study arm (300 total). The two enrollment sites will each enroll 150 subjects (75 control and 75 intervention) with at least 33% being gun owners. For every 30 subjects enrolled, the site Principal Investigator and Research As…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18+ years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria (must meet ALL): 1. Provision of signed and dated informed consent form 2. Caregiver of child hospitalized on a pediatric hospital medicine service aged 0-17 3. English or Spanish speaking caregiver 4. Access to necessary resources for participating in a technology-based intervention follow-up assessments (e-mail and telephone) Exclusion Criteria: 1. Caregivers of children admitted for firearm injury 2. Caregivers of children with a firearm injury within the last 3 months 3. Caregivers of children admitted with a primary psychiatric diagnosis including suicidal ideation,…
Interventions
- BehavioralSafe Storage Intervention
Firearm storage information and secure storage device.
- BehavioralSafe Kids Medication
The Control participants will view a brief medication storage safety video produced by Safe Kids. A Frequently Asked Questions handout on medication safety created by Safe Kids will be available for parents as well.
Locations (2)
- Children's Hospital ColoradoAurora, Colorado
- Monroe Carell Jr Children's Hospital at VanderbiltNashville, Tennessee