Three Things To Read This Week

This year, for the first time in our country’s history, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy declared that gun violence is a public health crisis. In a recently released 40 page advisory, Dr. Murthy urged policymakers to deploy tools from the public health toolkit to reduce gun violence “with the vigor used to reduce injuries from tobacco and motor vehicle crashes.”

In the advisory, the Surgeon General urges cities to build “hospital‑community partnerships that connect those who have experienced violence, or are at risk for violence, with appropriate services.” 

These programs “typically combine a short intervention in the hospital with intense case management and services in the community [including] trauma counseling, legal services, work placement, and school enrollment assistance.” Collectively, these services interrupt cycles of retaliatory violence by helping gunshot victims stabilize their physical, mental, and financial health, thereby reducing the risk that the person will become either a gunshot victim or perpetrator in the future. 

As the Surgeon General underscores, “turn[ing] the tide on the crisis of firearm violence in America” is a “generational challenge” requiring “the collective commitment of the nation.” 

Fortunately, cities across the country are answering the Surgeon General’s call. This edition of Safer Cities focuses on three recently launched hospital-based violence intervention programs that illustrate the point:

1. In Alabama, the city of “Mobile is launching a hospital-based intervention program to curb gun violence.”

For NBC News, Andrea Ramey reports that the city of Mobile, Alabama will partner with both the Mobile County Health Department and USA Health University Hospital “to create a hospital-based violence intervention program.” 

• First, while the gun violence victim receives medical treatment, the program also provides them with dedicated advocates who “offer bedside support at the hospital and provide referrals to community programs to help with things like housing and food insecurity.”

• Next, once discharged, the person receives “long-term services and support” such as “ mentoring, follow-up care and assistance and case management.”

Speaking to the need to “break that cycle of violence,” Dr. Ashley Williams Hogue, a trauma surgeon at University Hospital, told NBC news that “she’s operated on the same victims who’ve been shot [and then shot again] in separate incidents.” That’s why Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson has emphasized the need to intervene immediately after an incident of gun violence occurs: 

“What we know is that when individuals show up as victims of crime at the hospital, typically they go back out into the streets, back into the neighborhoods and they become a victim again or either they themselves commit a crime … That is what this intervention program is about. It's about intervening while they're at the hospital.”

2. Chicago Invests $3 Million To “Deliver Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programming And Wrap-Around Services To Victims Of Violence.”

This effort, which is part of Mayor Johnson’s broader community safety plan, will focus heavily on victims of violence from fifteen neighborhoods that account for roughly half of the city’s gun violence. The city’s public health department, which is the agency administering the funding, said that it will rely on a set of best practices “proven to address the risk factors associated with violence” including “reduced recidivism rates … [a] return to work and school, increased self-esteem, decreased retaliatory violence, decreased substance use, and decreased trauma and recidivism.”

Dr. Simbo Ige, Chicago’s Public Health Commissioner, echoed the same sentiment voiced by the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory when describing why Chicago is investing in hospital-based violence intervention to reduce gun fatalities:

“Violence is a public health crisis, and just as we treat the physical manifestations of violence, we must also treat the psychological and emotional aspects for both victims and their families … [That’s why] it is critical that victims of violence are transitioned into community-based programs to promote ongoing physical and psychosocial recovery and increased safety.”

Related: The $3 million investment expands the footprint of a hospital-based violence intervention network that has already found success in the city:

“For the past six years, the University of Chicago Medicine's Violence Recovery Program has provided extensive support services to thousands of patients who suffered violent injuries, most from gun violence.

Today, it has close to 20 violence recovery specialists who work around the clock. In 2023 alone, it helped nearly 2,000 UChicago Medicine patients, almost two-thirds of whom had gunshot wounds. 

The [program also] offers patients referrals to more than 60 community-based social and behavioral health agencies, so they will have a comprehensive recovery and reduce risk for re-injury.”

3. In Atlanta, Grady Hospital’s Violence Intervention Program Achieves “More Than Preventing Re-Injury … It’s Giving People Hope.” 

As Liza Lucas reports for Alive 11, Atlanta’s NBC affiliate, the program at Grady Hospital—Atlanta’s only Level 1 Trauma Center—launched last year as “an effort to reach 14- to 24-year-olds who come to Grady after being injured by gun violence.” 

Like the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Randi Smith, who leads the program at Grady Hospital, says she “truly believes violence is a public health problem … What that means is that we treat it just like any infectious disease. When there is an outbreak we contain it, we understand the root causes and prevent its spread.”

Thus, in addition to physical and mental health care, Grady’s hospital-based violence intervention program places “credible messengers” — trained experts who live in the community— at the patient’s bedside to “offer patients resources and support as they heal from their injuries.” Later the team of messengers provide “a warm hand-off” to community-based groups that assist with wraparound services such as housing, job, and food assistance to help stabilize the person’s life. 

Since last year, the program “completed 600 consultations with more than 450 gunshot victims—and 98% of those who were eligible for services agreed to receive the support.” 

The result: “While gun violence victims are often prone to reinjury or retaliation, Grady data shows only 1 percent of [the program’s] participants have been re-injured in the past year.”

Related: When the program at Grady Hospital launched last year, the team from the University of Chicago Medical Center’s hospital-based violence intervention program provided “guidance and training” to help ensure a successful launch. This wasn’t a one-off training. Dwayne Johnson, the director of the violence prevention program, said that the University of Chicago team will provide similar training to facilities across the country with the “goal [of] having our model duplicated throughout the nation … this program is life-changing, and other institutions see that.”