A new violence intervention program run by the City of Akron is set to launch in Akron hospitals before the end of the year.
The initiative, which is expected to partner with both Summa Health and Cleveland Clinic Akron General, is designed to meet victims of gun violence at their hospital bedside and offer long-term case management and connections to resources in a bid to disrupt cycles of retaliation and trauma.
The program is part of the city’s broader public safety strategy under Mayor Shammas Malik’s administration — one that seeks to build a community violence intervention ecosystem, said Tony Ingram, the city’s public safety strategist.
In addition to the new hospital program, the strategy includes initiatives such as the credible messenger street team. Both were among Malik’s goals for his first 100 days in office, but have taken longer to come to fruition. Akron City Council approved $73,000 for a hospital-linked violence intervention coordinator — the final iteration of the program will still need to be approved by council members.
Ingram said reimagining public safety starts with a neighborhood- and community-centered approach that takes into account the social determinants of health.
The strategy doesn’t stop at gun violence. It also includes projects such as bringing a mobile grocery store to Akron.
“Reimagining that is taking this very holistic, and often they say it’s a public health approach, but I think it’s even more than that. It is looking at those things that may be contributing factors that lead to violence,” Ingram said.
A Thursday press conference at 11:15 a.m. in the Ocasek Auditorium at 172 S. Broadway St. will provide updates from city officials on the Street Team Pilot Program and the SCOUT program, part of the city’s broader public safety strategy that includes the hospital-linked violence intervention coordinator. The event will be livestreamed on the mayor’s Facebook page.
New program will meet gun-violence victims at hospital bedsides
Akron’s hospital-linked violence intervention program will serve as an “entry point” to other forms of intervention work, such as the credible messenger street team, said Richelle Wardell, the city’s education and health strategist.
The program will focus on victims of interpersonal, community-based gun violence who arrive in the emergency departments of the partnering hospitals. The idea is that hospital staff will notify the coordinator, who will be introduced to the patient at their bedside after they have been stabilized. From there, the patient will be offered long-term case management and connected to resources.
“The hospitals call it ‘care first,’ and it’s very important to them. We stabilize the patient, and then the intervention,” Wardell said.
Although the workflow has been outlined on paper, she said, it might not always go according to plan. For example, the credible messengers may know that a victim has been hospitalized before hospital staff have flagged the case for intervention.
The coordinator role will be filled by a licensed social worker embedded in the Minority Behavioral Health Group. The program will include outreach and referrals, aiming to address immediate needs and establish longer-term support systems. The coordinator may eventually pass off a case to a credible messenger, Wardell said.
The inspiration came from the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, a national network of hospital-based programs. The organization offers support, training and technical assistance to a community of violence intervention specialists, doctors, health administrators and researchers.
HAVI’s framework emphasizes a trauma-informed approach that recognizes the need to address both the psychological and physical wounds of survivors to fully heal and recover, according to its website. This model “relies on the ‘teachable moment,’ the rare opportunity during which people are particularly receptive to interventions that promote positive behavior change.”
Akron is taking some cues from HAVI’s approach, but its model will differ from the agency’s structure, Wardell said.
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“What we’ve learned is that their exact framework is not necessarily what makes our hospital systems comfortable,” Wardell said.
The hospital systems are uncomfortable with what makes anyone uncomfortable, she said, like the fear of the unknown.
As city administrators began talks with the hospital systems, they found that having a licensed social worker who was supervised by a mental health organization made the hospital administrators more comfortable with the program, Wardell said. This comes with the added security of a memorandum of understanding that will help the parties involved navigate issues such as HIPAA compliance.
How will success be measured?
Hiring the right person for the job will be the key, Ingram said, and it will take the longest amount of time to accomplish. Wardell added it will be someone who understands the community and, ideally, comes from the community.
“This person is going to have to be able to build trust quickly. It’s going to be a very highly skilled individual that’s going to be able to do this kind of work,” Wardell said.
The first year is going to be a “testing ground” before the city considers expanding the program. And for now, the hospitals are comfortable sharing one coordinator, Wardell said. On average, both Summa and Akron General have had about 100 gunshot wound cases in each of the past five years. Not all patients will choose to engage with the coordinator.
Recidivism will be a key marker.
“The big one in this kind of work is recidivism,” Wardell said. “Are they coming back to the ER?”
But it’s more than that. “It’s not just ‘Are they coming back to the ER with a gunshot wound?’” she said. “It’s like, ‘Are they coming back to the ER at all? Are they utilizing the ER as their primary care?’”
If the program works well, the coordinator and the street team members will help clients connect with local resources like primary care physicians or assist them with workforce development issues. And they’ll “wrap around the families,” Wardell said.
That kind of long-term support — tracking social determinants of health on an individual level — should reduce community violence, she said.