Gun Violence in Missouri: Seeking Solutions

Missouri is on pace to have more deaths from gun violence this year than ever before, especially in St. Louis, Kansas City and other cities that are breaking homicide records. Public health experts say gun violence is an epidemic that can be treated by addressing issues such as poverty, racial inequality and housing insecurity.

Join American Public Square at Jewell, The Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 8 for the third digital program in our series Gun Violence in Missouri: Seeking Solutions.

Our discussion will focus on public health approaches to gun violence in St. Louis and across the state of Missouri, examining how poverty, social unrest, racial inequality, food and housing insecurity, and other factors contribute to the problem.

Our expert panel will discuss the root causes of gun violence and we’ll take the conversation further to identify actionable plans aimed at addressing these urgent issues for the greater good of our communities.

This digital event is part of the Missouri Gun Violence Project, a two-year, statewide journalism collaboration investigating the causes and possible solutions to gun violence. It is supported by the nonprofits Report for America and Missouri Foundation for Health.

The conversation will be moderated by Pamela “Denise” Long, director for organizational development at Alive and Well Communities, a Missouri-based nonprofit focused on activating communities across the state, as well as in Kansas and Illinois, to address the trauma experienced by their residents.

This program is presented in partnership with Report for America and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Panelists

Richard Rosenfield, criminologist and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Robert Jordan Jr., retired St. Louis police officer

Moderator

Pamela “Denise” Long, MS, is director of organizational development and applied research at Alive and Well Communities. Her work focuses on translating the principles of trauma informed care into internal organizational practices and internal/external organizational approaches to work life and service delivery. Her organizational writing and professional publications focus on shifting race-related narratives and implementing institutional racial equity/anti-racism. In 2012, due to her family experiencing education-related racialized toxic stress, Denise began her study of resilience/trauma, how people learn and unlearn racial socialization, and how racial socialization manifests in care relationships and institutional culture. She earned her Bachelor of Health Science in occupational therapy from Mizzou (1997) and a Master of Educational Psychology (learning and cognition) from University of North Texas (2015). Denise is a doctoral student of organizational leadership and development with a focus on PreK-12 executive leadership of institution-wide racial equity. She is intimately familiar with trauma and rural Black poverty having grown up in an out-house equipped tin roof shack in segregated Mississippi and accumulating an ACE score of 8.