Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention Awarded CDC Research Grant to Expand Firearm Safety Screening to Women’s Health Clinics

The $650,000 funding will bring the health system’s ‘We Ask Everyone’ firearm prevention screenings to OB/GYN practices

NEW HYDE PARK, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Northwell Health’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention has developed a proven approach to firearm injury prevention, and now, with a $650,000, one-year research grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the health system is expanding that work with a focused lens on women’s health. The grant will fund a new study integrating the health system’s universal firearm safety screening and education into routine women’s health care, bringing life-saving prevention tools directly to patients where they already receive trusted, comprehensive care.

The study, led by co-principal investigators Chethan Sathya, MD, pediatric trauma surgeon and director of Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention, and Sandeep Kapoor, MD, vice president of Emergency Medicine Addiction Services at Northwell and director of Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), builds directly upon Northwell’s previously developed universal firearm injury risk screening tool, created and rigorously evaluated under prior funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“Early identification of risk and thoughtful intervention is impactful,” said Dr. Kapoor. “By bringing firearm safety and firearm violence risk screening into the clinical arenas where women already feel comfortable and supported, we have a real opportunity to have important conversations that could save lives. This study will allow us to incorporate our screening tools as a seamless part of the care women are already receiving.”

Known as the “We Ask Everyone” screening protocol, the verbal questionnaire takes seconds to administer, asking patients about firearm access, personal safety and related risk factors. Since 2020, it has been used to screen more than 100,000 emergency room patients, including pediatric cases, across Northwell’s 28-hospital network. This grant will allow researchers to adapt this validated tool specifically for women’s health and evaluate its implementation across six racially and economically diverse OB/GYN clinics within the Northwell Health system.

Like the universal screening, within the participating OB/GYN clinics, patients will receive:

• Universal screening: A confidential check-in regarding firearm access and household safety.
• Brief counseling: Tailored, compassionate conversations using established clinical counseling techniques.
• Safety resources: Guidance on secure firearm storage - including gun locks and safes — as well as direct connections to local community support programs.

A central focus of the research is identifying the most effective way to help clinicians and clinical staff adopt firearm injury prevention practices as part of routine care. To do so, the six participating clinics will be divided into two groups:

• Active support clinics: Three clinics will receive intensive, hands-on training, ongoing coaching and dedicated clinical workflow support.
• Passive support clinics: Three clinics will receive standard educational materials and protocol guidelines.

“Women’s health is about so much more than what happens in the exam room — it is about ensuring our patients are safe at home, in their communities, and throughout every stage of their lives,” said Dr. McNally, medical director and vice president, Katz Institute for Women’s Health, Northwell Health. “Firearm injury is a leading cause of pregnancy-related and postpartum death, and yet it remains an under-addressed crisis in women’s health care. This study gives us the tools and the framework to change that.”

The research team will track and compare screening rates across both groups. Patients will be followed up at one month and three months post-visit to assess whether those seen at actively supported clinics report safer firearm storage behaviors at home and greater engagement with community resources. The findings will ultimately produce a practical blueprint that OB/GYN clinics nationwide can use to integrate these interventions into standard care.

A growing platform for prevention

This grant is the latest milestone in a series of major advances from Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention. Earlier this year, the “We Ask Everyone” screening protocol was integrated into the May 2026 version of Epic’s electronic health record (EHR) system, making it available to thousands of hospitals and health systems caring for more than 325 million patients nationwide, giving health systems a ready-to-use solution to begin firearm safety screening while building the standardized data needed to drive future research and prevention strategies.

“This new grant is one piece of a much larger effort to treat gun violence as the public health crisis it is,” said Dr. Sathya. “We have spent years building and validating the tools, conducting the research and developing the infrastructure to make firearm injury prevention a routine part of clinical care. Now we are taking those proven approaches and applying them in a new setting — because the evidence is clear that screening works, and more patients deserve access to these conversations.”

In March, Northwell also unveiled Guiding Health Systems to Action on Firearm Injury & Violence Prevention, a first-of-its-kind digital implementation toolkit developed with support from the Joyce Foundation. Released at Northwell’s 7th Annual Gun Violence Prevention Forum, the toolkit brings together nearly 100 clinical, community and system-level strategies drawn from hospitals and health systems across the country – offering a practical roadmap for any health system looking to build or expand its own gun violence prevention programming.

Together, these efforts reflect Northwell’s commitment to moving gun violence prevention from individual institutions to a coordinated, nationwide public health response.

“Northwell has always believed that health systems have a responsibility to lead on the issues that matter most to the communities we serve and gun violence is one of the most urgent of our time,” said John D’Angelo, MD, president and CEO of Northwell Health. “With every grant awarded, every clinic trained, and every patient screened, we are moving the needle on what was once considered an untouchable issue in health care. My hope is that the work coming out of Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention continues to serve as a beacon for health systems across the country, demonstrating that this work is not only necessary, but possible.”

Northwell has led the charge to address gun violence as a public health crisis since 2019 and formed its Center for Gun Violence Prevention in 2020. The Center takes a multi-faceted approach that includes providing clinical care and support services to those impacted by gun violence, conducting research on firearm injury prevention, and screening emergency room patients about their risk factors and home firearm safety.

In 2022, Northwell expanded its impact by creating the National Health Care CEO Council on Gun Violence Prevention & Safety, which now convenes 60 leaders from some of the nation’s largest health systems and hospitals to develop best practices, mobilize the health care sector to depolarize gun safety discussions, and dramatically reduce gun violence so it is no longer a significant driver of hospital admissions and deaths.

For more information on the Center for Gun Violence Prevention, click here.

About Northwell Health

Northwell is the largest not-for-profit health system in the Northeast, serving residents of New York and Connecticut with 28 hospitals, more than 1,000 outpatient facilities, 22,000 nurses and over 20,000 physicians. Northwell cares for more than three million people annually in the New York metro area, including Long Island, the Hudson Valley, western Connecticut and beyond, thanks to philanthropic support from our communities. Northwell is New York State’s largest private employer with over 107,000 employees – including members of Northwell Health Physician Partners and Nuvance Health Medical Practices – who are working to change health care for the better. Northwell, named a TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025, is making breakthroughs in medicine at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. Northwell is training the next generation of medical professionals at the visionary Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. For information on our more than 100 medical specialties, visit Northwell.edu and follow us @NorthwellHealth on Facebook, X, Instagram and LinkedIn.