Promoting Family Health Through Gun Lock Distribution

Through Foundation funding, BJC Community Health Improvement encourages gun safety to prevent violence and increase family health in St. Louis, where firearm-related injury and death are high compared to the rest of the nation. The BJC Community Health Improvement responsive initiative prioritizes responding to community needs, implementing prevention-based programs, and mobilizing community services. Thanks to donors who support this work through the Foundation, we can help address urgent community needs beyond hospital walls.  

Firearm Safety for Family Safety

Access to cable gun locks and education on firearm safe storage practices help prevent unintentional gun injury and death, as well as firearm-related suicide attempts, which make up over 50% of all firearm-related injuries. 

To help address these safety needs in the St. Louis community, a total of 15,102 gun locks were distributed in 2024 through 12 BJC emergency departments, through community partners, and through the Women & Infants team at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. 

And BJC team members are seeing how the availability of gun locks helps patients. “Visitors and patients take them, and staff feel safer,” says an emergency department nurse manager from a rural hospital. “We are preventing other possible injuries in the community.” 

Another BJC hospital distributed gun locks at a local health fair, a strategy that was well-received by community members. An emergency department nurse manager from a large hospital explained that patients are grateful that the hospital has gun locks for free. According to data from St. Louis Children’s Hospital, rates of hospital admissions for unintentional firearm-related injury are trending down.

Looking Forward

The pilot partnership disseminating gun locks at the Women & Infants Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital provides additional insight. Families are grateful to discuss firearm safety with their care teams and receive gun locks at a time when they are especially focused on the well-being of their new children.

With that in mind, the team anticipates providing at least an additional 15,000 locks through the program in the coming year, with an emphasis on the families and caregivers of pediatric patients exposed to firearms. The team plans to provide gun locks through youth-serving community sites, including BJC Community Wellness Hubs, to extend the reach of gun lock distribution further into our community. 

In the coming year, gun locks are part of a larger firearm violence prevention strategy—to prevent bullet-related injury and death and reduce repeat bullet-related injury among youth from birth to age 25 and to improve the patient experience of those experiencing bullet-related injuries. Gun violence impacts the entire family, and the community at large, as the leading cause of death in youth.

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