Of the 5,000 admissions to Cook County Hospital’s Level I Trauma Center last year, close to 1,000 were the result of gunshot wounds. Nearly 30 percent of those patients were young men between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Of the 900 women admitted for trauma services, 12 percent were severely injured due to abuse by their spouses or partners.
"Those kinds of numbers moved us to understand that this is not just an isolated problem," says Susan Avila, RN, MPH, nurse epidemiologist in the Department of Trauma at Cook County Hospital. "It is why we made the decision to form linkages with other agencies and other disciplines to address the issue of violence. We looked to the Great Lakes Center as a resource because they have the expertise in training."
The Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health (GLC), within the UIC School of Public Health, is a multi-faceted initiative to improve, promote, and maintain the health of workers and communities. As part of its mission, GLC provides education to individuals and communities to improve knowledge, skills, and awareness of health and safety issues.
Working with the Cook County Bureau of Health Services—including the hospital’s Department of Trauma and the bureau's Ambulatory Care Network—the GLC is implementing a Violence Prevention Train-the-Trainer Program. Over the next six months, 100 employees from the Cook County health system will participate in a four-day education session, empowering them to teach others to recognize the warning signs and risk factors for violence in communities. The program will prepare these physicians, nurses, clerks, health educators, and public health outreach professionals to organize training sessions, participate in health fairs, share their message, and disseminate the tools for violence prevention and injury control in the communities they serve.
The curriculum, based on a popular adult education model, includes case studies, small group discussions, and participant-directed activities. Topics cover adult and health education, elder abuse, workplace violence, child abuse, youth violence, and partner violence. Rather than focusing on abuse recognition or violence remediation, the program addresses early warning signs and effective interventions. Participants learn to teach others how to profile individuals or situations with a predisposition for becoming violent and how to implement change or erect barriers in order to prevent that violence.
"The program also enlightens participants on the public health perspective for violence prevention," says Leslie Nickels, executive director of the GLC. "With the level of impact violence has had on the health of our communities, the health care sector must take some responsibility for its prevention and resolution."
Contributed by Marian Lawler
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