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CARBONDALE (WSIL) -- After recent mass shootings and local gun violence, SIU students and the City of Carbondale are cooperating on research looking for solutions. 

Tammy Kochel, associate dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at SIU, is heading up a study aimed at dissecting the causes and patterns associated with gun violence in Carbondale.

The city council is providing more than $64,000 for the study, which centers on information gathered from online surveys, interviews and a small group meeting, along with official data sources from Carbondale.

Along with the online survey, which takes less than 10 minutes to complete, Kochel and her students have conducted individual interviews with people from local organizations with interest in the gun violence problem. 

Some of things the students will look at include:

• Relationships between gun assaults
• Gun homicides
• Anonymous arrest data
• Anonymous Memorial Hospital emergency room discharge information for fatal and non-fatal firearm cases
• Geographic, temporal analysis of Jackson Co. Dept. of Public Health EMS

The research team currently is focusing on the immediate drivers of the problem in Carbondale.

They hope this will uncover patterns such as time of day, day of week and geographic factors that will help city officials be proactive.

“We hope our report describes the specific nature of gun violence in Carbondale and the types of evidence-based and promising solutions that have worked for similar gun violence problems,� Kochel said. “We hope it will be used to guide service providers and to make funding decisions.�

for more information on their research goals.