Stuart Gilmour, professor of biostatistics at St. Luke’s International University Graduate School of Public Health (SLGSPH), has published a research paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine along with colleagues from Waseda University (Japan), the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Sun Yat Sen University (China). The research analyzed suicide rates by method in the USA from 2000 to 2020, differentiated by race, and showed that White and Indigenous Americans had much higher rates of suicide due to guns and hanging. The article was published along with an editorial by Joseph Gone, professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, describing the high risk of suicide faced by Indigenous Americans and calling for a new suicide prevention framework in this vulnerable group.

This research continues SLGSPH’s series of research on mortality in the USA, which is being conducted by several students under Prof. Gilmour’s guidance alongside colleagues and students from Waseda University, University of New South Wales and Sun Yat Sen University. This research will impact policy on firearms control, suicide prevention, harm reduction and long-term COVID recovery in the USA, which is experiencing a unique decline in life expectancy due to rapidly increasing drug-related and firearm-related deaths, at the same time as COVID-19 continues to affect the country’s health system.