Higher exposure to gun violence among Black and Hispanic Americans helps explain persistent racial disparities in both general health and chronic health diagnoses, according to Rutgers researchers.
Their study, published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities , examined whether exposure to gun violence is a pathway connecting socioeconomic disadvantage to racial disparities in health among U.S. adults.
Researchers say racial disparities in health remain one of the most persistent public health challenges in the United States. Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than white Americans to live in communities facing concentrated poverty, disinvestment, and elevated rates of gun violence. Yet relatively little research has examined whether exposure to gun violence itself helps explain the link between patterns of socioeconomic disadvantage and racial gaps in health, leaving an important piece of the puzzle largely unexamined.
"Gun violence is not only a public safety problem, it is also a public health issue that contributes to racial disparities in health," said Daniel C. Semenza , director of research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers and an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Camden. "Black and Hispanic Americans experience substantially higher levels of gun violence exposure, and those differences help explain disparities in both self-rated and chronic health problems."
Using a nationally representative 2024 survey of 7,066 Black, Hispanic and white adults, the researchers measured individual and community disadvantage alongside lifetime exposure to gun violence. That exposure included being threatened with a firearm, being shot, knowing someone who was shot, witnessing a shooting and hearing gunshots in one's neighborhood.
The researchers then used statistical modeling to evaluate how socioeconomic disadvantage and gun violence exposure related to self-rated health and chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol. They also simulated how disparities might change if exposure were equalized across racial groups.
Greater exposure to gun violence was associated with poorer self-rated health and more chronic health problems across all racial groups. Black and Hispanic adults reported substantially higher exposure than white adults, and these differences accounted for meaningful portions of the racial gaps in health.
When the researchers simulated reducing gun violence exposure across racial groups to the same levels, racial health disparities shrank substantially, producing larger reductions than equalizing community socioeconomic disadvantage alone. This positions gun violence exposure as a distinct structural pathway through which disadvantaged community conditions shape long-term health.
"Our findings suggest that reducing exposure to gun violence may be an important pathway for improving health equity in the United States," said Semenza, the lead author of the study. "Most discussions of gun violence focus on injuries and deaths, but the health burden extends much further, to chronic disease and overall well-being among millions of people who may never be physically injured but live with repeated exposure to gun violence."
The findings suggest gun violence exposure functions as a social and structural determinant of health, the researchers said. Policies and programs that reduce gun violence, particularly community-based approaches grounded in employment, therapeutic support, and wraparound support, may improve population health while advancing health equity. The authors also note that healthcare systems should consider violence exposure as an important factor influencing long-term health, paired with care coordination that connects patients to community-based prevention and trauma-informed services.
Those involved in the study said future research should examine additional contributors to racial health disparities, such as interpersonal discrimination and differential exposure to policing, and pursue longitudinal data to better understand how gun violence exposure, community disadvantage and health unfold over time.
Study coauthors include Sultan Altikriti, Kimberly Burke, and Christopher Thomas of Rutgers and the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.
