Gaelle Clesca, center, an assistant nurse manager at Cohen Children’s...

Gaelle Clesca, center, an assistant nurse manager at Cohen Children’s Medical Center with her family. Asking about unsecured firearms is on her list of safety checks. Credit: Gaelle Clesca

With firearms now the leading cause of death among children and teens, Northwell Health has launched a national safety ad campaign that tells parents it “doesn’t kill to ask about unlocked guns” in places where their children will be. 

The New Hyde Park-based health care system has created print, broadcast and digital ads urging parents to ask whether there are any unsecured firearms in homes where their children will be playing. A website, www.northwell.edu/lock-guns, offers suggestions for ways to bring up the topic with friends.

More than 1,000 hospitals and health associations, including the American Hospital Association and the Children’s Hospital Association, have joined in the campaign, Northwell said.

“if your kid goes to your neighbor's home … you'll make inquiries, possibly, about animals, about food allergies. You'll make an inquiry about whether their pool is safe if they have a swimming pool,” Northwell CEO Michael Dowling said in an interview. “So we're trying to make it comfortable for people to ask the question about guns.”

Northwell’s Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park has treated more children and teens who have suffered gunshot wounds so far this year than in any previous year, Dowling said. The injuries are a mix of accidental and intentional shootings that happen in homes, on the streets and elsewhere, he said.

Nationally, firearms were the leading killer of children ages 1 through 18 in 2020, according to an analysis of federal data published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Previously, motor vehicle crashes had been the leading cause of death in that age group for 60 years, a separate study showed.

“Gun violence is a major public health issue,” Dowling said. “I believe we have a responsibility to influence what happens … and to focus in on safety and prevention.”

A new public-service TV ad from Northwell Health depicts parents dropping their child off at a friend’s house and getting assurance that a pet tiger there will be caged during the visit. The 30-second ad urges parents to inquire about unlocked guns at friends’ homes, saying it “doesn’t kill to ask about unlocked guns in the house.”

Over the last five years, Northwell has established a Center for Gun Violence Prevention, held national conferences, and obtained a $1.4 million National Institutes of Health grant to study gun violence prevention and screen patients for firearm injury risks..

“It’s a couple of million dollars a year that we spend, but to me it's an expenditure on health,” Dowling said.

Gaelle Clesca, an assistant nurse manager at Cohen Children’s, said she and her colleagues have treated a growing number of children injured by firearms. 

“Our babies are dying, and we need to do something. And as a mom, as a nurse. I'm going to speak up, I'm going to advocate,” she said.

Clesca said she started asking about unsecured firearms at other families’ homes after the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May.

“I just added that to my list of safety checks,” said Clesca, 41, who lives in West Hempstead with her husband and their three children, ages 2 to 11.

Clesca compared gun safety with prevention of drunken driving. Decades ago, she said, “no one really thought that it would be OK to ask someone, ‘Hey, did you drink? Can you give me your keys?’”

Now, she said, “we don't feel uncomfortable bringing that up.”

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