Education and career
Branas received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Franklin & Marshall College in 1990, where he studied mathematics. He later earned an MS in 1993 from Drexel University and a PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1998. He then pursued postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley, which he completed in 2000. [1]
Early in his career, Branas worked in emergency medical services as a paramedic. [4] [5] He subsequently held research and teaching positions in clinical and public health settings, focusing on injury prevention and trauma care systems, including leading optimization studies for helicopter depot and trauma center locations that demonstrated a 34% gain in 60-minute access to care across twelve U.S. states. [6] [7] Prior to joining Columbia University, he was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, where his work centered on the geography of medical care access and firearm-related injury. [8]
In 2017, Branas was appointed Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. He has led multiple large-scale research initiatives, including two Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded injury research centers. [9] [10]
Research
Branas is known for studying how place-based and structural factors (the built environment, housing, and emergency response systems) influence health, safety, and access to care. His work integrates methods from epidemiology, public health, and urban planning to study issues such as gun violence, emergency medical systems, and neighborhood-level interventions. He has applied these approaches in U.S. and international settings, focusing on how the physical and social environment contributes to injury, disease, and health disparities.
A 2004 study of his showed that rural US residents were at greater risk of gun suicide than urban residents were of gun homicide, and was subsequently cited by the US Supreme Court. In 2009, he published the first study to show that individuals in possession of firearms were more than four times as likely to be shot than those not in possession. [11] Also that year, he published a study showing that heavy drinkers were 2.67 more likely to be shot during an assault than people who did not drink at all. The study found that this association was largely because the drinkers spent so much time near liquor stores that sold alcohol to-go. [12] In 2018, he led the first series of citywide randomized controlled trials (RCTs) showing that greening vacant lots, as well as requiring homeowners to put glass in their windows, resulted in significantly fewer gun assaults, shootings, and self-reported fear and depression among residents. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] His work has shown that approximately 15% of the spaces in US cities is vacant or abandoned, a total area about the size of Switzerland, making low-cost citywide interventions like these of high value to urban planners and policymakers.
Advocacy
Branas applies his public health research to real-world settings, including advocating for evidence-based gun violence prevention. [18] [19] [20]
From 2020 to 2023, he served as Chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Applied Research for Hazard Mitigation and Resilience. He is Co-Chair of the Firearm Violence Special Interest Group at the National Academy of Medicine and a founding board member of the Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms. [21]
Branas is a co-founder of the Columbia Scientific Union for the Reduction of Gun Violence (SURGE), an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together researchers from across Columbia University to advance evidence-based strategies for gun violence prevention; they envision that “more science means less violence.” [22] The initiative fosters collaboration among scholars in public health, education, medicine, law, and social work to generate new data and inform policy decisions. [23]
He is active in organizing and chairing scientific meetings, including leadership roles with the Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section of the American Public Health Association and co-organizing the National Research Conference on Firearm Injury Prevention. [22]
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