Contact Principal Investigator’s Welcome

Welcome to the Mississippi Violence Injury Prevention (MS VIP) Program.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center is the state’s only Level 1 trauma center. The MS VIP team will develop and implement optimized community-focused interventions through a comprehensive approach of screening, brief intervention, and referral for treatment (SBIRT), that are aimed at reducing the incidence of firearm injury, functional victim recovery, incidence of retaliation and reinjury, and economic impact at the community and individual levels in the greater Jackson, Mississippi metropolitan area.

Mississippi had the nation’s highest firearm mortality rate in 2020. This project is well positioned to successfully engage with community partners to provide multilevel data about determinants and test community-based interventions for firearm violence injury in a community with a high burden of firearm mortality.

Funded by NIH, MS VIP is a member of the Community Firearm Violence Prevention (CFVP) Network coordinated through the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. 

Lei Zhang, PhD, MBA

Contact Principal Investigator
Mississippi Violence Injury Prevention Program