Introducing Cohort Advisors: Dr. Emmy Betz and Dr. Sean Joe
We’re excited to announce two leading practitioners and researchers in the field of firearm suicide prevention have joined as advisors to the Missouri Firearm Suicide Prevention Learning Cohort.
As advisors, Dr. Emmy Betz and Dr. Sean Joe generously share their research expertise and practice experience with the cohort, supporting members to better understand the problem of firearm suicide and how they might prevent it through community-based strategies.
Thank you to Dr. Joe and Dr. Betz for their leadership in helping us learn how we can keep Missourians safe from guns.
Get to know our Advisors
Dr. Sean Joe
Sean Joe, PhD, MSW, is a nationally recognized authority on suicidal behavior among African Americans and is expanding the evidence base for effective practice with Black boys and young men. Dr. Joe joined the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis in Fall 2014 as the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development.
Working within the Center for Social Development, Joe has launched the Race and Opportunity Lab, which examines race, opportunity, and social mobility in the St. Louis region, working to reduce inequality in adolescents’ transition into adulthood.
Joe served on the board of the Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN USA), the scientific advisory board of the National Organization of People of Color Against Suicide, and the editorial board of Advancing Suicide Prevention. He is the founder and director of the Emerging Scholars Interdisciplinary Network, a national interdisciplinary and multi-ethnic professional development network for early career social and behavior scientist.
Watch Dr. Joe’s keynote speech at the 2019 American Psychological Association Conference on emerging trends in suicidal behavior among African Americans and the outsized role that firearms play in suicides in America.
Dr. Emmy Betz
Emmy Betz is a board-certified emergency physician who works clinically at the University of Colorado Hospital and conducts research in injury epidemiology and prevention. She is currently a Professor of Emergency Medicine (University of Colorado School of Medicine), Deputy Director of the Injury and Violence Prevention Center in Colorado (Colorado School of Public Health), and a Research Physician at the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Core (Eastern Colorado VA).
Dr. Betiz is a nationally-recognized expert in firearm injury prevention and an invited member of workgroups with numerous medical organizations, the Department of Defense Suicide Prevention Office, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
She co-founded and leads the Colorado Firearm Safety Coalition, a collaborative effort between public health and medical professionals and firearm retailers to reduce firearm suicides. She serves as PI and Co-I on multiple research projects funded through the National Institutes of Health and private foundations, has published over 120 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and in 2015 she gave a TEDxMileHigh talk on firearm suicide.