Faculty Profile

April Zeoli

April M. Zeoli, PhD, MPH

  • Associate Professor, Health Management and Policy
  • Policy Core Director, Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention

Dr. April Zeoli is an Associate Professor in Health Management & Policy in the School of Public Health and the Director of the Policy Core in the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. She conducts interdisciplinary research, with a goal of bringing together the fields of public health and criminology and criminal justice. Her main fields of investigation are the prevention of firearm violence, intimate partner violence, and homicide through the use of policy and law. She is one of the nation’s leading experts on policy interventions for firearm use in intimate partner violence. Broadly, Dr. Zeoli studies the role of firearms in intimate partner violence and homicide, as well as the civil and criminal justice systems responses to intimate partner violence. Her research focuses on legal firearm restrictions for domestic violence abusers and their impact on intimate partner homicide and the implementation of those firearm restrictions. Dr. Zeoli is also a leading expert on the use and implementation of extreme risk protection orders. She is the primary investigator of the largest study of extreme risk protection orders to date, involving six states and over 6,600 cases. Dr. Zeoli is an Associate Editor for the scholarly journal Homicide Studies and is on the editorial board of the journals Injury Epidemiology, Injury Prevention, and Criminology & Public Policy, and serves as the research expert for the National Domestic Violence and Firearms Resource Center.

  • PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2008
  • MPH, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2000
  • BA, University of Michigan, 1998

Firearms, intimate partner violence, homicide, firearm laws, and extreme risk protection orders.

Research Projects:
Zeoli's six-state study on extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs) is the largest study of its kind and explores the risk profiles of respondents to the orders, factors that are associated with ERPOs being granted, the use of ERPOs in cases of threats of mass shootings, and whether ERPOs are associated with reductions in firearm suicide.

Zeoli is collaborating on a case-control study of the risk factors for intimate partner homicide, including factors related to gun access and use, in six states.

Zeoli is leading a study on the implementation and outcomes of domestic violence restraining order firearm restrictions for restraining order petitioners who have experienced gun-involved intimate partner violence. This study is being conducted in three states to compare results across differing state laws.

Zeoli is collaborating on a project to analyze whether permit-to-purchase firearm licensing laws are associated with reductions in intimate partner homicide in states that have these laws. Permit-to-purchase laws require an individual who wants to purchase a gun to obtain a license through local governmental authorities.

Zeoli AM, Paruk J, Branas CC, Carter PM, Cunningham R, Heinze J, Webster DW. Use of extreme risk protection orders to reduce gun violence in Oregon. Criminology and Public Policy. 2021; 20(2): 243-261. DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12544.

Zeoli AM, Paruk JK. Potential to prevent mass shootings through domestic violence firearm restrictions. Criminology and Public Policy. 2020; 19: 129-145. DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12475

Zeoli AM, Goldstick J, Mauri A, Wallin M, Goyal M, Cunningham R. The association of firearm laws with firearm outcomes among children and adolescents: A scoping review. Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 2019; 42(4): 741-762. DOI: 10.1007/s10865-019-00063-y

Zeoli AM, Frattaroli S, Roskam K, Herrera A. Removing firearms from those prohibited from possession by domestic violence restraining orders: A survey and analysis of state laws. Trauma, Violence, and Abuse. 2019; 20(1): 114-125. DOI: 10.1177/1524838017692384.

Zeoli AM, McCourt A, Buggs S, Frattaroli S, Lilley D, Webster DW. Analysis of the strength of legal firearms restrictions for perpetrators of domestic violence and their associations with intimate partner homicide. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2018; 187(11): 2365-2371. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwy174

View full list of publications at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QHzNAqcAAAAJandhl=enandoi=ao

Email: [email protected]
Address:
M3164 SPHII
1415 Washington Heights
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

For media inquiries: [email protected]

Areas of Expertise: Firearm Injury Prevention,  Health Policy