Firearm injuries and deaths in the United States remain among the most urgent public health challenges of our time. In response, the Healthcare Coalition for Firearm Injury Prevention (HCFIP) has emerged as a dedicated, multi-specialty, multidisciplinary, collaborative initiative to bring together health care professionals to reduce firearm‐related harm. This article traces the Coalition’s origins, highlights its present functions, and outlines the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Origins: From Summit to Coalition

The genesis of HCFIP lies in a series of summits convened by major medical and public health organizations. The inaugural Medical Summit on Firearm Injury Prevention took place in 2019, drawing more than 45 organizations seeking a consensus-based, nonpartisan, public-health approach to firearm injury prevention.¹ At that summit, participants identified key components of a public health framework including secure storage, lethal-means counseling, hospital-based violence-intervention efforts, and research agendas, as well as persistent gaps in data and funding. Following a second summit in 2022, co-hosted by ACEP, the American Academy of Pediatrics,  the American College of Physicians, the American College of Surgeons (ACS), and the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, the participating organizations resolved to establish a durable structure to sustain and coordinate their shared efforts.² Thus, the Healthcare Coalition for Firearm Injury Prevention (www.hcfip.org) was formally founded as a multidisciplinary, nonpartisan coalition committed to advancing a public health approach to firearm-injury prevention.

The American College of Surgeons and the “Common American Narrative”

The work of the ACS laid crucial groundwork for the creation of the Coalition. Well before the summit meetings, the ACS Committee on Trauma (COT) had undertaken a systematic examination of firearm injury as a preventable cause of death. Under the leadership of Dr. Ronald M. Stewart, then chair of COT, the ACS convened national discussions with trauma surgeons, public health experts, firearm owners, and community leaders to identify points of agreement and shared values. From this process emerged the conceptual framework of the “Common American Narrative” — an inclusive framework recognizing both the constitutional right of firearm ownership and the shared moral responsibility to prevent needless injury and death.³

Rather than approaching firearm injury prevention as a political debate, Dr. Stewart and his colleagues reframed it as a unifying public health issue rooted in compassion, science, and mutual respect. This approach resonated with many other U.S. medical professional organizations who were simultaneously advocating for practical measures such as universal background checks, secure firearm storage, research funding, and hospital- and community-based violence intervention programs. This ethos of respectful dialogue and evidence-driven collaboration embodied in the Common American Narrative proved instrumental in shaping the tone, scope, and eventual coalition-building that gave rise to HCFIP.