Penn Nursing’s Therese Richmond Featured in Oprah Magazine

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[dropcap]U[/dropcap]niversity of Pennsylvania School of Nursing Professor and LDI Senior Fellow Therese Richmond is featured in an article about gun-related violence in O, The Oprah Magazine, one of the country’s highest-circulation women’s publications.

The article in the January, 2020, issue was about Joseph Sakran, MD, a physician who was gunned down as a teenager at a Washington, D.C. high school sporting event, nearly died, but recovered to ultimately graduate from medical school and do his residency in the same hospital that saved his life. He now treats gun violence victims as an Assistant Professor of Surgery, Director of Emergency General Surgery, and Associate Chief of the Division of Acute Care Surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Initially, he began speaking publicly about gun violence in 2012 when he was doing a two-year fellowship in Traumatology, Surgical Critical Care and Emergency General Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Physicians and gun violence
Sakran has since become a national advocate for physicians’ active engagement with gun violence as a health issue. An outspoken critic of the National Rifle Association’s 2018 call for “anti-gun doctors to sit in their lane,” Sakran’s Twitter handle @ThisIsOurLane has over 32,000 followers.

[content_elements:element:1]In her interview with Oprah Magazine, Richmond, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, said “Social efforts like Sakran’s do more than just raise awareness — they can help providers feel more comfortable speaking out…Many health care professionals are afraid to talk about gun violence.”

“It’s essential for providers, researchers, and legislators to collaborate,” Richmond told Oprah. “We need to use data and experience to inform and evaluate policy, because not everything works the way we think it will. We don’t have to be pro- or anti-gun. We have to change the conversation: How do we keep people safe?”

Richmond is one of the country’s leading health services research experts in the areas of gun-violence as well as the long-term psychological traumas that accompany it, but are often not treated.

Media placement reach
In an email congratulation to Richmond on the dissemination achievement, School of Nursing Associate Director of Communications Ed Federico noted, “these types of media placements are very important and go a long way, especially with the general public. Some stats to consider about Oprah Magazine: it has a year-over-year audience of 10 million people; its website gets 6.8 million unique visitors; its Facebook footprint is 1.3 million people; and the least expensive ad that can be placed is $73,000.00 and the most expensive is $239,000.00!”