Thread by @RheaBoydMD

Did everyone see this paper by @ProfDesmondAng called The Effects of Police Violence on Inner-City Students??

It documents how living in proximity to policing killings increases student absenteeism, decreases their GPA and their likelihood to graduate! Thread (with pdf link)

I want to list some of the findings because they are significant and alarming.

The study looks at 700,000 high school students in Los Angeles from 2002-2016 and their proximity to a local police killing (based on their home address).

Here's the pdf: scholar.harvard.edu/files/ang/file…

It finds that in the days following a police killing absenteeism spikes among nearby students (defined as those who live within a 0.5mi radius of the killing).

Nearby students also experience a decrease in their GPA (up to 0.08 standard deviations) for at least FOUR semesters.

Exposed students are 15% more likely to be classified with "emotional disturbance" (a pervasive mood of depression linked with PTSD) AND twice as likely to report feeling unsafe outside of school the year after a killing.

As a result, "students exposed to officer-involved killings in
the 9th grade are roughly 3.5% LESS likely to graduate from high school and 2.5% LESS likely to enroll in college. Though smaller in size, this effect remains significant for students exposed in 10th and 11th grades."

These findings are only found for Black and Latinx students in response to police killing other folks of color and the effects are largest when police kill unarmed civilians.

Ang concludes "Each officer-involved killing caused 3 students of color to drop out of high school" (!!)

Shout out to @ProfDesmondAng for this important work, @atheendar for putting me on to it (he also summarized this paper beautifully here: mailchi.mp/4f9efb33961d/n…) and to @jlegewie's work journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… for establishing this critical link as well.

Work like this matters because it elucidates the "spillover effects" or additional consequences of police violence that extend from brutalized victims, to witnesses, those who live in "lethally-surveilled" neighborhoods to quote @aasewell or state (@drdrtsai @JacobBor).

And it matters to pediatricians because it impacts our kids!

Living near an event of police violence makes it less likely our Black and Latinx youth will successfully complete high-school (and dropping out of school decreases their earning potential and life expectancy!!)