Santaularia Gomez and Co-authors Examine Cumulative Exposure to Police Shootings and Mental Health in Minneapolis
Posted: 5/28/2026 (CSDE Research)
CSDE Affiliate Jeanie Santaularia Gomez (Epidemiology), former CSDE Trainee Maryam Tanveer (Epidemiology) and co-authors published new work in the Journal of Urban Health that used hospital discharge data and two-way fixed effects models to examine how temporal community-level exposure to police-involved shootings influenced mental health diagnosis rates across ZIP code areas in Minneapolis They find a nonlinear relationship: as cumulative shootings increase, their effect on mental health diagnosis rates rises to a peak before diminishing — a pattern consistent across racial groups and suggestive of sensitization followed by desensitization. In contrast, recent shooting exposures had little effect, suggesting it is the concentrated, compounding nature of police violence that most burdens community mental health.