STAT (1/3, Thielking) reports investigators “at Harvard and Yale have” used a “mathematical model to predict potential victims of gun violence in Chicago.” After examining “Chicago police data from 138,163 individuals who were arrested between 2006 and 2014, nearly 10,000 of whom were also victims of gun violence,” researchers found that “in 63 percent of the shootings they studied…social contagion played a key role.” Their study was published online Jan. 3 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

HealthDay (1/3, Mozes) reports that “social networks” are “acting as a breeding ground for the spread of gun exposure and violence,” the study findings suggest. Study author Ben Green, PhD, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School, said, “Those at the highest risk of gun violence are the individuals with the most associates who have recently been shot.”

Related Links:

— “Gun violence spreads like an infectious disease, new research finds,” MEGAN THIELKING, STAT, January 3, 2017.

The Washington Post (1/3, Johnson) “Wonkblog” reports, “A new analysis” published Jan. 3 “in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that little has changed over the past three decades” when it comes to Federal funding of research into firearms as a “common cause of death and injury” in the US. Three decades ago, after “scouring a database of the research funded by the National Institutes of Health,” researchers at that time concluded that “a thorough review of research awards for 1983 failed to identify a single research project on the topic of firearm injuries.”

Now, the authors of the present study theorize that “if public health issues were funded based on their death toll, gun violence injuries would have been expected to receive about $1.4 billion in federal research funding over about a decade – compared with the $22 million that it actually got.” This time, investigators “didn’t limit their analysis to NIH; they used a database that contains projects funded by multiple federal agencies.”

Related Links:

— “The reasons we don’t study gun violence the same way we study infections,” Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post, January 3, 2017.

Healio (1/3, Oldt) reports, “Approximately two-thirds of females with eating disorders recovered by age 22 years and [while recovery from] bulimia nervosa occurred earlier, recovery from anorexia nervosa continued over the long-term,” researchers found after conducting “clinical interviews with females with DSM-III-R or DSM-IV anorexia or bulimia at 9 years’ follow-up and 20 to 25 years’ follow-up,” then re-interviewing “77% of the original cohort…(n = 228).” The findings were published in the January issue of Child Abuse & Neglect.

Related Links:

— “Long-term recovery is common in eating disorders,” Eddy KT, et al., Healio, January 3, 2017.

HealthDay (1/2, Preidt) reports that research suggests “sleeping soon after a traumatic event can help some people cope.” In the small study, participants divided into two groups viewed a video containing “traumatic images.” Study author Birgit Kleim said, “Our results reveal that people who slept after the film had fewer and less distressing recurring emotional memories than those who” stayed awake. The findings were published in the December issue of Sleep.

Related Links:

— “Sleep May Help People Process Traumatic Events,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, January 2, 2016.

MedPage Today (12/29, Firth) reports that the 21st Century Cures Act, “the nearly 1,000-page healthcare spending bill which President Obama signed in mid-December, also aims to reform the nation’s fragmented mental health system.” About 13 million Americans “have a serious mental illness or substance use disorder, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which applauded the 21st Century Cures Act, calling its reforms to mental health a ‘huge step forward.’”

Related Links:

— “What Else is in the 21st Century Cures Act?,”Shannon Firth, MedPage Today, December 29, 2016.