Key points from today’s guests:
Dr. Robert Winfield, trauma surgeon; division chief, Acute Care Surgery, The University of Kansas Health System.
- Guns are leading cause of death among kids.
- Taking a public health approach means that we see these injuries and that we're attempting to try and prevent those injuries by looking at things that predated the injury.
- The presence of guns is one thing, but we look at socio-economic factors and environmental community factors to make sure that we're exploring every avenue to potentially prevent an injury from occurring.
- I recently attended a summit put on by the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. It was a gathering of healthcare CEOs and executives from health systems around the country, along with trauma surgeons, emergency physicians, pediatricians – the people who see the end result of gun violence – to share best practices for dealing with gun violence.
- Gunshot injuries represent somewhere in the 12-15 percent neighborhood of all patients we see at The University of Kansas Health System.
- Stop the Bleed is a program that is bringing trauma care to the community.
- We do tend to think of gun violence is something that happens to someone else somewhere. The best thing we can do is to recognize that this is affecting all of our community, even if it's not affecting each of us individually on a daily basis, and figure out what our contribution to addressing that looks like.
Olivia Desmarais, R.N., injury prevention education specialist, The University of Kansas Health System
- We work with an organization called ThrYve, which stands for Together Helping Reduce Youth Violence for Equity.
- It is a collaboration of charities, faith based organizations, law enforcement, the judicial system, and more to support initiatives like afterschool programs that includes finding jobs for kids, arranging transportation, helping with safe housing, addressing food insecurity, and other activities.
- From this program, REVIVE was formed. REVIVE stands for Reducing the Effects of Violence through Intervention and Victim Empowerment.
- Case workers are notified when a patient aged 12-24 comes in who is a victim of violence, so they can offer services to that patient and their family to try to stop the cycle of violence.
- If we are addressing their social determinants of health, they are going to feel more safe and secure in the community and they'll be less likely to either be re-victimized or retaliated against for their injury.
- Trauma informed care new way of thinking. We want to interact with everybody in the community with a trauma informed lens.
- We do have resources to help, so please reach out.
