Spatial accessibility to gun violence exposure on walkable routes to and from school

Acoustic sensors find frequent gunfire on school walking routes

A new study used acoustic sensors that detect the sound of gunfire to show how often children in one Chicago neighborhood are exposed to gunshots while walking to and from school.

Results showed that nearly two-thirds of schools in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago had at least one gun incident within 400 meters (about one-quarter mile) of where children were walking home during the 2021-22 school year.

These findings suggest a need to redefine federal definitions of school gun violence to include indirect forms of violence that take place near schools, not only on school grounds, in order to more appropriately capture the burden on communities of color, said Gia Barboza-Salerno, lead author of the study and assistant professor of public health and social work.

“Not all the violence children are exposed to is direct violence or happens on school grounds,” Barboza-Salerno said. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an impact. Hearing gunshots on the way to and from school is terrifying and will affect how kids perform in school.”

The study was published in the journal SSM-Population Health.

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