The Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center is receiving $400,000 from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant to implement programs studying violent fatalities in the state, but not those caused by guns.
KIPRC is a partnership between the state Department for Public Health and University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health.
Director Terry Bunn says the money is a continuation of a two-million dollar five-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The funding will go towards a myriad of programs including those focused on sexual assault reporting among teens, safer driving practices and minimizing the incidents of falling for the elderly.
But one focus area for funding will be hospital education programs for traumatic brain injury in children, as violence to children rates are higher than the national average.
“Kentucky child mortality rate is 10 percent for kids aged 0 to 4 years and 21 percent higher for kids under the age of 1," said Bunn. "We also have a traumatic brain injury fatality rate that’s 23 percent higher than US rates.”
Kentucky ranks fifth in the nation for unintentional injury fatality rates. Bunn says that high rate comes from motor collisions, falls and suicide and firearms, however the center is unable to investigate the latter.
“Unfortunately the CDC is prohibited from doing any sort of gun research," said Bunn. "These are CDC funding grants that we have and it’s explicit in our notice of award that we cannot fund any research towards that.”
Bunn says that’s due to a Congressional ban in place since the late 1990s. Kentucky is one of 18 states contributing data to the National Violent Death Reporting System.
