Experts highlight stats, violence prevention efforts at Public Health After Dark event

When it comes to preventing violence in Douglas County, experts told a crowd of about 50 people on Thursday it takes a comprehensive community approach, and those efforts need to focus on youth as early as possible.

There isn’t one “magic bullet” to prevent youth violence, said Jomella Watson-Thompson, University of Kansas professor of applied behavioral science, associate vice provost of community impact and a researcher affiliated with the Center for Community Health and Development.

Although schools are critical and can provide both protective and risk factors for children, Watson-Thompson said, it takes a continuum of support from everyone.

“So strengthening the family bonds, having prosocial peers, prosocial activities, so things to do when you’re out of school,” she said.

Watson-Thompson leads the Kansas City Youth Violence Prevention Research Center. The center is designed to “prevent and reduce youth violence, particularly among Black and Latino youth,” according to a webpage published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which provides funding for the center and others like it. The centers were established in response to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Watson-Thompson said as young people age they are often offered fewer opportunities — or grow less aware of those opportunities. Communities should continue working with young people into their adulthood, she said.

Jonathan Smith, executive director for Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, told the crowd that violence directly impacts health across the community.

“When you evaluate more data related to violence and see that 15% of Douglas County adults have experienced physical abuse before the age of 18, and 15% of adults in Douglas County have experienced violence between adults in their household before they were 18 years old, those things you’re learning about the health of our community, those are things that impact the health of our community,” he said.

Dee Kinard, informatics manager for LDCPH, presented additional statistics about homicide and other leading causes of death in Douglas County from 2014 to 2023. The data was compiled based on information obtained from death certificates.

Homicide was a leading cause of death for people ages 1 to 44 in Douglas County during that 10-year period.

For children 1 to 9 years old, Kinard said, homicide was the second leading cause of death, behind unintentional injuries. Homicide was the third leading cause of death for those 10 to 24 years of age, behind unintentional injuries and suicide. For the 25- to 44-year-old age group, homicide was the sixth leading cause of death in Douglas County.

“But it’s not a leading cause of death for all ages,” Kinard said. “So what this shows is that it’s a young person’s issue.”

Citing statistics compiled from a review of emergency room visits from 2018 to 2024, Kinard said nearly half were for assault encounters experienced by people — mostly men — between the ages of 20 and 34 years old. Over time, the data showed visits to the ER for assaults had decreased, as well as the number of victims being seen in the ER.

“So that’s a good thing,” Kinard told the crowd. “So we’ve made some progress. I’d like to think that the progress has been because we have a behavioral health system to help people, but that’s at least a positive thing.”

Kinard said she could not provide statistics on how many of those emergency room visits were due to intimate partner violence. Most who were treated were white, non-Hispanic men, according to Kinard.

“But we do have some positive trends,” she said. “Our homicide rate’s a lot lower than Kansas and the United States and selected counties, our assault visits in the emergency department has been going down, and we have very few gun injuries.”

Suicide prevention efforts in the community were also discussed by panelists at the Public Health After Dark event.

Douglas County Undersheriff Stacy Simmons said she’s been working on a suicide prevention project with LDCPH.

“When we work through this program about suicides, we’ll be putting out a lot of information, and I can tell you, from a Sheriff’s Office standpoint, we have a lot of calls for suicide attempts and those that actually go through with it and take their own lives,” Simmons said.

Statistics Kinard presented showed suicide as the second leading cause of death among Douglas County residents ages 10 to 44 during the years 2014 to 2023.

Bill Dewitt, principal at Eudora High School and a former administrator in Lawrence Public Schools, said according to CDC survey numbers, 42% of high school students felt sad or hopeless on a regular basis in 2021, compared to 26% in 2009.

“That’s a terrifying statistic,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that feed into that. Some of it is the fear of violence in their schools. There’s no doubt about it, but there are a lot of other factors too.”

The proportion of students surveyed who said they had seriously considered attempting suicide was 22% in 2021, up from 14% in 2009.

Dewitt said he could cite studies that showed the rates of violence of among teens were declining, and schools are one of the safest places for children to be during the day. School shootings have increased significantly in recent years, Dewitt said, citing Education Week’s school shooting counter.

“And so for me, for me to tell you that schools are safe,” Dewitt said. “A lot of people that just does not resonate, because they see media, particularly a child myself that graduated in ‘92 and was early in my career in ‘99 with Columbine, when you get the first kind of news media 24/7 covering that kind of a travesty, it’s been that world we’ve lived in for the last 25 years.”

Tricia Masenthin (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at tmasenthin (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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