Urban gun violence disproportionately affects segregated Black neighborhoods. That’s one of the main points that a physician and assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania wants to get across.
Dr. Eugenia South, a physician at Penn Medicine was a keynote speaker Thursday at the annual Dr. David Satcher Community Health Improvement Awards, presented by the Center for Community Health & Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
During her talk, South discussed the root causes of urban gun violence in many cities, including Rochester. And she said those incidents are often tied to structural racism.
“There is this link between structural, historical and structural ongoing aspects of racism that determine the amount of investment that goes into neighborhoods and something like gun violence, which again, I think is a symptom of a lack of investment, South explained at the virtual event.