AAFP Foundation’s Family Medicine Discovers (FMD)
Predicting Youth Gun Violence Risk in a Non-Urban Family Medicine Setting
“My goal for my patients is to prevent illness,” said Sanjay Batish, MD, FAAFP. “Family physicians need to be upstream of this. One of my intentions was to shine a spotlight on the problem, with hope to spark conversation.”
Batish, founder of Batish Family Medicine in Leland, NC, was speaking of youth gun violence and his motivation for applying to the FMD Rapid Cycle Scientific Discovery and Innovation (RapSDI) program.
Each year, two selected scholars receive up to $40,000 and mentorship from the AAFP Foundation and the DARTNet Institute to support a research project in family medicine.
Batish became a Cycle 2 scholar for his project to determine if the SaFETy questionnaire (a screening tool that has been shown to predict firearm violence risk in teens and young adults visiting urban emergency rooms) could be applicable in a non-urban, primary care setting.
He enlisted four practices in southeastern North Carolina to survey patients, ages 14 to 24. Each completed two screenings, six months apart.
“We found surprisingly high positive scores for the SaFETy questionnaire,” Batish said.
SaFETy scores run from zero to 10; two or above is considered high, with greater risk for future firearm violence. Those who scored high also had an association with adverse childhood events (ACEs).
Batish said family physicians often assume that gun violence is an urban or ER issue, and that they don’t have a role to play until after a traumatic event has occurred.
“This helped shed some light on the prevalence of firearm access for the individuals who are 14 to 24 years old in our patient population,” he said. Batish’s results echoed those of the original SaFETy study in Flint, Mich.
Batish’s manuscript on his findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM). He plans future research with a larger sample size and extended follow-up to validate the findings of the pilot study.
Sanjay Batish, MD, FAAFP
Since opening his practice in 1998, Batish has seen many patients directly and indirectly impacted by gun violence. “I was not seeing that reflected in medical journals and there was no information from researchers or leadership regarding how to counsel patients,” he said.
And while the issue of gun violence brings to mind the threat of mass shootings (accounting for 1 percent of all gun deaths), Batish emphasizes that doctors need to focus on suicide prevention, which accounts for 53 percent of all firearm deaths in the United States.
Batish initially heard about FMD RapSDI at FMX, the AAFP’s annual conference. His first application was turned down, but he received great feedback, applied with a more refined idea the following year and was selected.
The grant allowed Batish to gain valuable research experience and learn the different steps that go into a good study, and he appreciated having access to “excellent project managers and statisticians with a wealth of knowledge.”
Batish advises other physicians who are considering applying to “think about a clinical question you’re not finding the answer to in journals and online searches,” and base your study around that.
“It’s important for us to participate in research,” he said. “RapSDI is a great way of starting that process in a comfortable and supported way.”
The Cycle 7 application window opens Oct. 1, 2025 and closes Jan. 16, 2026, at 5 p.m. CT. Learn more about FMD RapSDI application process.