Firearm Injury and Violence Research Articles in Health Sciences by Funding Status and Type: A Scoping Review

Background
Federal funding for firearm injury and violence research is a politically volatile area marked by Congressional restrictions and executive actions. Little is known about the field’s funding landscape of published scholarship in the health sciences in the past two decades shadowed by political contestation. This study sought to characterize the number and sources of funding for firearm injury and violence articles published in health sciences journals, with respect to quantity and funding source, from 2000 through 2019.
Methods
We performed a scoping review of original, empirical, peer-reviewed articles related to firearm injury or violence published in health science journals between 2000 and 2019, using the PRISMA extension for Scoping Review checklist. We identified declared funding sources for all articles meeting our inclusion criteria and conducted descriptive analyses to characterize the number of articles that had explicitly declared funding, no funding, or no explicit declaration. Among articles with funding, we examined proportions by funding source.
Results
We identified 812 articles meeting our inclusion criteria. The number of articles published annually ranged from a low of 11 in 2008 to a high of 162 in 2019. About 119 (14.7%) of the articles explicitly declared not having received any funding, and about 240 (29.6%) had no explicit funding declaration. 453 (55.8%) of the included articles declared at least one source of funding. Of these, 232 (51.2%) reported at least one federal grant, and 238 (52.5%) reported at
least one philanthropic grant. We observed a dramatic increase in the number of published articles beginning in 2017. While the volume increased over time from 2000 through 2019, the proportion of articles with funding was lower in 2019 (55.6%) than it was in 2000 (87.5%).
Conclusion
The number of firearm injury and violence articles published in health sciences journals has notably increased since 2017; however, the proportion of those with funding has declined compared to 2000. More resources are required for the field to recover from the dearth of funding in prior years.