Another key component to good public health, according to experts, are policies promoting both healthy and safe neighborhoods.

Camden County leaders agreed to dedicate this year's National Public Health Week to educating the public about responsible gun ownership and normalizing the conversation around how safe storage saves lives.

Melissa Rose Cooper reports.

We urge everyone to secure all your guns, to model responsible behaviors, to ask for the presence of unsecured weapons.

Recognize the role that guns is suicide and suicide.

And tell your peers to be smart.

Camden County Health Commissioner Virginia Betteridge stressing the importance of gun safety in honor of Public Health Week.

The annual event recognizes organizations working to improve the health and well-being of residents.

This year's theme Protecting, Connecting and Thriving, putting an emphasis on the importance of keeping children protected from guns.

This piece of equipment that actually looks like a bicycle chain can change the trajectory of what's happening in our county and in our nation.

The Board of Commissioners hosting this gun stores presentation, along with Be Smart, a program dedicated to raising awareness of gun safety.

We all agree that we want our kids to grow up happy and healthy.

We all agree that we have the right as adults to make responsible decisions as to how to protect our homes, our families and our communities.

And that includes whether or not to make the decision to own a firearm.

And we should all agree that if we can prevent even one child death or injury, it is our responsibility to do so.

Dave Austin is the smart lead for the South Jersey Moms Demand Action local Group.

He says it's especially important to make sure guns in the home are secured as firearms are the leading cause of death for American children.

While school shootings and mass shootings made national headlines, most unintentional shootings involving children occur in their homes in incidents of gunfire on school grounds.

76% of the shooters under the age of 18 obtain the guns they use from their home or from the homes of relatives or friends.

Under state law, all firearms must be unloaded and stored in a securely locked gun, safe or other locked container, and all ammunition must be stored separately.

There are plenty of ceremonies to store their firearms securely, but even in those homes, there's often one firearm at least kept storied, stored, loaded, unlocked, sort of readily accessible, often in case of home invasion in the middle of the night.

My goodness.

This is what the Rutgers Gun Violence Research Institute.

He says studies show firearm storage is the exception and not the norm.

And a recent study has found that one of the main sort of motivators for folks not to adopt secure storage is that they just don't actually believe that it's going to be particularly helpful to prevent suicide, to prevent accidental deaths or prevents theft.

There's just not a lot of buy in within the fire money community that this is a useful tool.

But we know from study after study that, yes, in fact, it can be extremely useful.

It's not about owning guns or things like that.

We know it's the right for people to own guns, but we want to make sure that people are safe while using those guns at homes, children rearing guns, children taking guns to school, guns that don't have locks.

So we think that public health plays a very vital role in making sure that these guns are safe to be used by the people that are intended to be used.

And even though gun safety might be an uncomfortable conversation to have, advocates say having it could just mean saving someone's life.

For NJ Spotlight News.

I'm Melissa Rose Cooper.