Curriculum Development

I became invested in firearm violence prevention after witnessing firsthand the impact firearms have had on my patients and their families, peers, and communities. This coupled with firearms becoming the leading cause of death in U.S. children, motivated me to look for opportunities for change. One potential solution I identified was through resident education, using experiential learning to give residents an opportunity to apply their communication skills and knowledge of safe storage in a low-stakes virtual reality (VR) setting. To learn the science of education and to be able to perform rigorous research, I enrolled in the University of Cincinnati Master of Education Program.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

Through fellowship with my mentors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) and our collaborators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Gun Violence Prevention, I have been able to create an educational VR intervention called Resident Education And Counseling on Household Firearm Safety (REACH Firearm Safety) that trains pediatric residents to screen for and counsel on firearm safety in outpatient primary care. Thus far I have: 1) tested the usability of this VR intervention with graduating CCHMC and MGH pediatric residents and presented this research as a poster at a national conference; 2) conducted a qualitative analysis with community focus groups on the acceptability of the VR intervention’s main communication framework and presented this at three national conferences as poster presentations and an oral platform presentation. Two manuscripts are under review for this work.