David Hemenway (born 1945) is a Professor of Health Policy at the

Harvard School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard- MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's firs ...

. He has a B.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1974) from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in economics. He is the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. He is also currently a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large at the

University of Vermont The University of Vermont (UVM), officially the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, is a public land-grant research university in Burlington, Vermont. It was founded in 1791 and is among the oldest universities in the Unite ...

. Hemenway has written over 130 articles and five books in the fields of economics and public health.

Research

Hemenway began his research in the field of injury prevention in the 1960s, when he helped investigate

product safety Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution Mathematics * Prod ...

for

Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the Un ...

as one of "Nader's Raiders". Since then, he has become well known for studying

gun violence Gun-related violence is violence committed with the use of a firearm. Gun-related violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide (except when and where ruled justifiable), assault with a deadly weapon, and ...

and how it can be prevented.

Books

His most recent book is ''While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention'' (2009). '' Private Guns, Public Health'' (2006) describes the public health approach to reducing firearm violence, and summarizes scientific research on firearms and health. ''Prices and Choices'' (1993) is a collection of twenty-six of his essays applying microeconomic theory to everyday life. ''Monitoring and Compliance: the Political Economy of Inspection'' (1985) describes the importance of inspection processes in ensuring that regulations are followed, and the reasons the system often fails. ''Industry-wide Voluntary Product Standards'' (1975) describes the role of voluntary standards and standardization in the U.S. economy. An early statistics article, ''Why Your Classes are Larger than Average'', has been anthologized in various mathematical collections. Alexanderson GL (ed). ''The Harmony of the World: 75 Years of Mathematics Magazine.'' Mathematical Association of America, 2007.Dudley U (ed). ''Is Mathematics Inevitable?'' Mathematics Association of America, 2008.

Other

Hemenway appeared at a forum hosted by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation and made the following statement in April 2013, "Instead of it being the mark of a real man that you can shoot somebody at 50 feet and kill them with a gun, the mark of a real man is that you would never do anything like that. . . . The gun is a great equalizer because it makes wimps as dangerous as people who really have skill and bravery and so I’d like to have this notion that anyone using a gun is a wuss. They aren’t anybody to be looked up to. They’re somebody to look down at because they couldn’t defend themselves or couldn’t protect others without using a gun."

References

* (General reference for this page
Harvard Injury Control Center Director webpage

External links

Harvard University Faculty Page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hemenway, David 1945 births Living people Gun politics in the United States Harvard University alumni Harvard University faculty American gun control activists Gun violence researchers Economists from Massachusetts 21st-century American economists