This Opinion piece was originally published by MedPage Today on Dec. 22, 2025. Republished here with permission.
If you’ve read the news recently, chances are you have seen the headlines about the mass shooting at Brown University that killed two of my fellow Brown students and injured nine others. You might have also seen me on the news, sharing my story and advocating for the Brown community.
Unfortunately, this was not my first school shooting. In 2018, I witnessed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, FL, while I was stuck outside at the adjacent middle school. On Dec. 13—almost eight years later—I survived the school shooting at Brown.
My experiences and the undeniable impact gun violence have had on my future should be a grim reminder for health care professionals: If you want to improve the health of our country, especially our nation’s children, you must advocate for gun violence prevention.
On that December Saturday, I was sitting in my dorm room, preparing to leave for the library, when I got a call from my friend. She told me through tears that students ran into her dorm hall saying there was an active shooter in the engineering building. The next 12 hours were an all-too familiar blur of calling family, responding to countless texts, watching the news, and coming to terms with my new reality.
After my prior experience witnessing the school shooting in Parkland, I developed post-traumatic stress disorder and have been in treatment ever since. Given this lasting damage, I was shocked at how well I was able to cope in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy at Brown. I realized that my brain was already accustomed to dealing with such a trauma, and thus responded with the coping mechanisms I have used for more than seven years to get through daily life.
But I never asked for this reality. I hate that I was so well-equipped to deal with the grief and fear that I was in a position to support my friends through their shock and loss. My brain should not know how to adjust after this, let alone go through it in the first place.
I decided to attend Brown University two years ago because I was admitted to their Program in Liberal Medical Education—an AB/MD program that guarantees me a spot in The Warren Alpert Medical School. Ever since I was a young child, I knew I wanted to spend my career in medicine as a means of helping those who need it the most. For decades, I have dreamt of my future as a physician: studying organ systems, attending pre-med summer programs, learning how to suture, shadowing doctors, and watching resident vlogs.
After Parkland, I realized I could use my passion for medicine not only as a means of treating the sick, but also to advocate for the populations I will serve. While some say that physicians must separate themselves from advocacy, I believe this mindset has stifled effective preventive measures in the American public health system. As an activist and someone who wants to specialize in pediatrics, I believe it will be my duty to advocate for upstream, preventive measures that keep kids safe and healthy in the first place. What that looks like in the US, unfortunately, is fighting to end gun violence.
Since 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death in America for children and adolescents. Although not historically viewed as the public health crisis it is—partially due to previous restrictions on federal funding for gun violence research—gun violence today takes up to 47,000 American lives annually (as of 2023). An issue like this requires doctors and policymakers to work in partnership on multifaceted solutions, without shying away from politics.
In a country without universal health care and with some of the worst health outcomes of developed nations, it is ignorant to assume that health is not inherently intertwined with the American political system. As with many public health issues, addressing the root causes often involves combating the systems that have enabled them in the first place. From this perspective, we can see how the gun violence epidemic is a manifestation of the ways that our country and the systems that run it have let down Americans.
I believe that clinicians and other health care professionals must advocate for commonsense gun violence prevention policies, such as mandated safe firearm storage, extreme risk protection orders, and universal background checks. On a community level, we need health care experts to advocate for increased funding for mental health treatment and community violence intervention programs. All too often, financial barriers prevent people struggling with their mental well-being from seeking help, and this can come at the expense of their lives or others’ lives.
In a country where guns are exalted as symbols of American liberty, it is up to everyone, including physicians, to sound the alarm about the impact of firearms on the nation's health. I dream of a future where gun violence is not an issue I must warn patients about once I begin to practice medicine, and where politicians are able to understand the importance of gun violence prevention before it devastates their communities. I implore you to protect the health of your communities and join me in the fight against gun violence in America.
Zoe Weissman is a PLME student concentrating in medical anthropology. She is also the director of the Parkland Chapter of March for Our Lives, a student-led gun violence prevention organization.