About

Jonathan S Jay is an associate professor at Boston University School of Public Health, specializing in urban health with a focus on youth exposure to gun violence. His work intersects data science and community health, examining the relationships between urban environments and health and safety risks. He is the principal investigator of a career development award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) aimed at studying multilevel strategies for reducing racial disparities in youth firearm injuries. Dr. Jay has previously served as a research fellow for the Firearm-Safety Among Children and Teens (FACTS) Consortium and for the Computational Epidemiology Group at Boston Children's Hospital. His background includes training as a lawyer-ethicist and work in global health policy, with academic credentials including a DrPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, and an MA in philosophy from Georgetown University.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Sociology
• Geography
• Demography
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Medical emergency
• Environmental health
• Economics
• Virology
• Gender studies
• Psychology
• Surgery
• Civil engineering
• Business
• Demographic economics
• Internal medicine
• Socioeconomics
• Emergency medicine
• Engineering
• Criminology
• Psychiatry

Selected publications

• Effects of a Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program on Community Violence in Boston, Massachusetts

  Annals of Internal Medicine · 2026-01-26 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: Hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) are widespread, but their effectiveness for violence prevention is unclear. OBJECTIVE: To determine the effects of Boston Medical Center's HVIP on future violence outcomes among violently injured young adults. DESIGN: Target trial emulation using observational data. SETTING: Boston, Massachusetts. PARTICIPANTS: Young adults aged 16 to 34 years who survived a shooting or stabbing. INTERVENTION: Target trials of 2 treatment strategies using the same eligibility criteria, time zero, and control group were emulated: 1) any treatment: engaging with the HVIP within 1 month of injury and 2) sustained treatment: initiating within 1 month and engaging more than 4 of the first 8 weeks. MEASUREMENTS: Combined measure of violent reinjury or violence perpetration at 1, 2, and 3 years, using hospital and police data. RESULTS: 1328 patients met criteria; 565 (42.5%) initiated within 1 month. Of these, 58 (10.2%) sustained engagement. In the any-treatment analysis, estimated cumulative incidence was roughly equal between the treatment and control strategies at 1, 2, and 3 years. In the sustained engagement analysis, treatment was associated with considerably lower cumulative incidence (4.5% [95% CI, 1.1% to 9.3%] at 1 year; 5.1% [CI, 1.1% to 9.3%] at 2 years; 6.4% [CI, 1.4% to 12.9%] at 3 years) versus the control strategy (8.7% [CI, 6.6% to 10.0%] at 1 year; 12.3% [CI, 10.2% to 14.5%] at 2 years; 14.3% [CI, 11.8% to 16.6%] at 3 years), with corresponding risk reductions of 47.6% (CI, -19.8% to 86.7%), 58.5% (CI, 21.6% to 91.2%), and 55.3% (CI, 4.9% to 90.2%). Confidence intervals were wide. LIMITATION: Despite our target trial emulation approach, results could be confounded by unmeasured factors associated with program engagement. CONCLUSION: Although HVIPs can improve long-term violence outcomes, these effects seem to require intensive participant engagement. PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE: Fund for a Safer Future.

  PublisherDOI

• Racialized economic segregation and firearm injuries: a network analysis of home and incident locations

  Research Square · 2026-03-05

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Summer Youth Employment Programs as a Structural Approach to Prevent Youth Violence: an Integrative Review

  Prevention Science · 2025-10-13

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Vehicle traffic as a determinant of community firearm violence

  Injury Epidemiology · 2025-10-24

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  BACKGROUND: Urban design sets the conditions under which individuals encounter one another. It is modifiable and can be an important intervention point for firearm assault prevention. Higher vehicle traffic, a previously under-studied exposure in firearm injury research, may contribute to firearm violence by fostering spaces that create interpersonal encounters while hindering positive social processes. We aimed to examine the association between vehicle traffic and firearm injury risk within the city of Portland, OR. METHODS: In response to local community concerns, we investigated the relationship between vehicle traffic volume and firearm assault risk in Portland, OR using novel traffic estimates from Streetlight, Inc, and firearm injuries from Portland Police, 2019-2021. We examined this association using (1) cross-sectional logistic regression with clustered standard errors and time strata covariates, and (2) an ecological case-crossover with conditional logistic regression comparing injury months to matched control periods at the same location in both the previous and subsequent months at the same type and time of day. Analyses were repeated at tracts and street segments in a high-risk neighborhood. RESULTS: Portland experienced 585 firearm assault injuries from 2019 to 2021. Tract-level average daily traffic volumes ranged from 9,584 to 230,804 trips. Tracts with 10,000 higher vehicle trips were associated with 27% increased risk (RR: 1.27, 95% CI: 1.12-1.45) of firearm assault, controlling for time variables and clustering standard errors at the census tract. In the case-crossover analysis a one standard deviation increase in traffic was associated with 59% (OR: 1.59, 95% CI: 1.17-2.17) and 85% (OR: 1.59, 95% CI: 1.35-2.55) higher odds of firearm assault at the same type and time of day in the prior month and subsequent month respectively. Street-segment analyses were in the hypothesized direction but not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Innovative strategies to curb firearm violence are necessary today more than ever. Future research should investigate whether traffic control could be a new avenue for community firearm violence prevention.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Spatial de-concentration of fatal and nonfatal firearm violence in Boston, MA, 2007–2021

  Injury Epidemiology · 2025-03-24 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: It is a "law" of criminology that urban crime chronically recurs at the same microplaces (i.e., street segments and intersections). An influential study found high concentrations of firearm violence at microplaces in Boston, MA, from 1980 to 2008. The current study assessed whether this strong spatial concentration has persisted. APPROACH: Fatal and nonfatal shooting incidents with one or more victims from January 2007 through September 2021 were included, obtained from the Boston Police Department. We matched shootings to the closest microplaces, i.e., intersections and street segments in Boston (n = 32,267). We operationalized spatial concentration as the probability of shootings occurring at the same microplace. We employed a case-only design, with shootings as the units of analysis; the outcome of interest was a binary indicator for whether another shooting in the dataset occurred at the same microplace in the past or future. We used log-linear regression to estimate this outcome as a function of study year. RESULTS: Annual shootings decreased over the study period, except for a spike in 2020. Spatial concentration of shootings declined from 62% in 2007 to 55% in 2021. We estimated that spatial concentration declined by an average of 1.8% per year [95% CI (-1.1, -3.4), p < 0.001]. IMPLICATIONS: This declining trend in the spatial concentration of firearm violence has important implications for place-based interventions and underscores the need to monitor this trend over time. Social media, which reshapes social interactions and is linked to community violence, warrants further study as a potential cause.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 13 Place-Based Prevention for Youth Gun Violence

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2025-01-03

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Algorithm development for the automation of death certificate analysis and coding

  Annals of Epidemiology · 2025-03-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Health Care Practitioner Bias and Access to Inpatient Rehabilitation Services Among Survivors of Violence

  JAMA Network Open · 2025-04-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Importance: Posthospital inpatient rehabilitation is essential for many patients with traumatic injuries. However, rehabilitation centers lack transparency and oversight in their admission practices and may be influenced by health care practitioner (HCP) use of stigmatizing language in patient medical records, leading to inequities in access to care. Objectives: To examine differences in admission to inpatient rehabilitation centers for patients hospitalized for violent penetrating (VP) injuries compared with motor vehicle crash (MVC) injuries. Design, Setting, and Participants: This mixed-methods retrospective qualitative study used data obtained from hospital records from 2015 to 2021. Data analysis occurred between July and December 2023. The study was performed at Boston Medical Center, an urban level I trauma center. The cohort included all patients hospitalized for VP or MVC injuries who were discharged to an inpatient rehabilitation center between 2015 and 2021. Exposures: Injury type, categorized as VP or MVC. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary quantitative outcome was a denial for admission to an inpatient rehabilitation center. Qualitative content analysis identified similarities and differences across injury types in the manifestations of predetermined stigmatizing language categories in patients' medical records. Results: Of 323 patients discharged to an inpatient rehabilitation center (median [IQR] age, 38 [25-59] years; 208 men [64.4%]; 29 Hispanic patients [9.0%], 118 non-Hispanic Black patients [36.5%], and 152 non-Hispanic White patients [47.1%]), 107 patients (33.1%) experienced at least 1 denial by a center before being placed (32 of 55 patients with VP injuries [58.2%] vs 75 of 268 patients with MVC injuries [28.0%]). Compared with patients with MVC injuries, patients with VP injuries had greater than 3 times the odds of experiencing a denial (odds ratio, 3.51; 95% CI, 1.93-6.48; P < .001). Medical records of patients with VP injuries had increased use of stigmatizing language that indicated culturally based or injury-related stereotyping, skepticism toward patient-reported symptoms, and heightened HCP-power dynamics contributing to unilateral decision-making. Conclusions and Relevance: In this mixed-methods qualitative study of hospital patients discharged to rehabilitation centers, significant disparities in denials for admission were observed among survivors of violence, who were disproportionally Black or Hispanic. Stigmatizing language found in medical records suggested that bias within the referral process may have contributed to these disparities. These findings underscore the need for reformed clinical documentation practices and enhanced oversight of rehabilitation referral processes to promote equitable access to care.

  PublisherDOI

• Examining associations between street vegetation and firearm violence with children as the victim at microgeographic locations in 3 US cities: a case control study

  Research Square · 2025-05-06

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Afterschool Child Firearm Assaults: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis

  AJPM Focus · 2025-10-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Introduction: Firearms are the leading cause of death among children in the U.S., with resources primarily dedicated to the prevention of school shootings. However, child firearm assault risk may surge during afterschool hours when children leave school and enter unsupervised and unstructured community spaces. The authors investigated child firearm injury risk at the afterschool transition in New York City. Methods: Firearm assaults from the New York City Police Department and school calendars from New York City Public Schools were obtained for 2006-2023, excluding COVID-19 years. The authors fit a difference-in-differences analysis to investigate whether firearm injuries increased into the afterschool hours more on school days than on nonschool days. The authors subsequently fit a regression discontinuity design model to assess whether firearm injuries increased abruptly at the transition to afterschool. The authors used the conventional 2PM threshold for defining the afterschool transition on the basis of prior literature and used the 25th percentile of enrollment-weighted school dismissal times as a sensitivity analysis. Results: A total of 359 of 613 child firearm assault injuries recorded between 10AM and 6PM occurred on school days across the 2006-2023 study period (excluding COVID-19 school years). The difference-in-differences results found that the risk of child firearm injury increased by 45% (RR=1.45; 95% CI=0.95, 2.20) after the 2PM afterschool transition on school days compared with that on nonschool days, although the result was not statistically significant. The regression discontinuity design model revealed that there was also significant increase of 2.5 (95% CI=0.49, 4.41) additional child firearm injuries at the 2PM threshold, an approximately 280% increase compared with the school-day average. Results using the dismissal threshold were positive but insignificant. Conclusions: Children's firearm assault risk increases substantially when they transition from the school day to afterschool. Researchers should investigate potential interventions to promote student safety during this period.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michelle C. Kondo

  Northern Research Station

  7 shared

• Emma Gause

  Boston University

  7 shared

• Charles C. Branas

  University of Otago

  6 shared

• Jonathan D. Quick

  6 shared

• David Hemenway

  5 shared

• Marc A. Zimmerman

  Michigan Department of Health and Human Services

  5 shared

• Sue Ziébland

  University of Oxford

  4 shared

• Julia Robertson

  Griffith University

  4 shared

Labs

• Community Health Sciences - Boston University School of Public HealthPI

Awards & honors

• Junior Faculty Fellow of the BU Hariri Institute for Computi…
• KL2 early career scholar of the BU Clinical & Translational…
• Data Science Fellowship (2024)