Cure Violence visit lays groundwork for community partnership to curb violence

Cure Violence visit lays groundwork for community partnership to curb violence

Christiana Hospital trauma surgeon Sandra Medinilla, M.D., and Joan Pirrung, APRN-BC, Christiana Hospital Trauma Program manager, talk with Timothy White, a violence interrupter and National Community Technical Assistant Coordinator for Cure Violence, and Frank Perez, MA, National Director of Outreach Services for Cure Violence, during a tour of Christiana Hospital’s trauma floor, trauma bays and Surgical Critical Care Complex.
June 28, 2013
Christiana Hospital trauma surgeon Sandra Medinilla, M.D., and Joan Pirrung, APRN-BC, Christiana Hospital Trauma Program manager, talk with Timothy White, a violence interrupter and National Community Technical Assistant Coordinator for Cure Violence, and Frank Perez, MA, National Director of Outreach Services for Cure Violence, during a tour of Christiana Hospital’s trauma floor, trauma bays and Surgical Critical Care Complex.
Christiana Hospital trauma surgeon Sandra Medinilla, M.D., and Joan Pirrung, APRN-BC, Christiana Hospital Trauma Program manager, talk with Timothy White, a violence interrupter and National Community Technical Assistant Coordinator for Cure Violence, and Frank Perez, MA, National Director of Outreach Services for Cure Violence, during a tour of Christiana Hospital’s trauma floor, trauma bays and Surgical Critical Care Complex.

In response to ongoing violence in the city of Wilmington, Christiana Care leaders want to go beyond simply caring for victims and perpetrators as they enter the Emergency Department. They also want to use those encounters as a chance to intervene and potentially prevent future violence. As part of this new effort to establish a community violence intervention program at Christiana Hospital, the trauma team invited representatives from Cure Violence — a well-known community-based violence-prevention program in Chicago — to visit Christiana Hospital and meet with community groups April 25-26.

The two-day tour included meetings with social workers, trauma nurses and physicians, and the hospital’s Violence Prevention Committee, as well as a sit-down with the Delaware Anti-Violence Task Force Coalition, a tour of Wilmington’s East Side neighborhood, and a viewing and discussion of “The People’s Report,” a documentary film produced by the Wilmington HOPE Commission that offers an inside look at violence in the city.

The Cure Violence representatives will use the information gathered during the tour to help assess Christiana Care’s needs and offer suggestions for how to partner with community groups to launch an intervention program at the hospital.

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