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SF Hospitals and Communities Unite to
Prevent Violence Saving wounded patients on blood-strewn operating tables is certainly a dramatic way to save lives, but San Francisco hospitals are looking for a better, albeit a quieter way. Three major hospitals -- UCSF/Mount Zion, San Francisco General Hospital and Kaiser Permanente -- have partnered with their communities to create violence prevention programs that work. "Violence is a public health issue," says Pamela Satterwhite, former director of UCSF/Mount Zion's Violence Prevention Project (MZVPP). "It requires collaboration, grass roots activism, and resources." The project focuses on the Western Addition. Satterwhite says, "We operate through a systems- and community-based model with five components: intensive family intervention, community education, violence prevention training, policy, and media." Among other things, MZVPP provides counseling and referral services, emergency childcare, a series of educational programs for both the community and the hospital staff, and works at integrating and optimizing services through a range of community collaboratives. Last January, for example, an ongoing eight-week educational series on Afrocentric parenting began. The 20 to 25 people who met weekly report more positive interactions with their children and the ability to deal more constructively with points of tension and conflict, says Satterwhite. Kaiser Permanente has also given financial and institutional support to a wide range of violence prevention programs. These include a staff education program for serving pregnant and battered teens, and a long-standing domestic violence committee that was instrumental in developing a protocol for San Francisco medical providers to report domestic violence incidents. A recent program is creating a violence-free zone around Everett Middle School through a collaborative of Everett parents and staff, UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, and Kaiser Permanente's Department of Psychiatry, and Division of Research. Jim Beauford, a Kaiser Permanente psychologist, was warned they would never get the parents and the community involved. "The cynics were wrong," he says. "Twenty-five parents along with groups of student leaders have undergone a training course in violence prevention." Parents walk the neighborhood. Stores post signs and offer safe haven for Everett students. "We are tracking violent incidents at school, along with truancy and grades," says Beauford. "Anecdotally, we are already seeing improvement." The grandfather of these hospital-based initiatives is the Trauma Foundation at SFGH. Over 20 years ago, SFGH charged this group with reducing all forms of trauma and trauma injury; in 1992 the Trauma Foundation was selected by the California Wellness Foundation to be its policy center for a statewide violence prevention initiative. "In that capacity," says Andres Soto, policy director for the Trauma Foundation/Pacific Center for Violence Prevention, "we have sustained a multi-pronged effort to systemically reduce violence in communities." Though its activities take a number of shapes throughout the state, most recently the Pacific Center parlayed a collaboration with the East Bay Public Safety Corridor to ban "junk guns" into similar bans in San Francisco, San Jose, Southern California and eventually to successful passage of a junk gun ban in the state legislature. Soto says, "We cannot compete financially with the gun industry. What we can do is use guerrilla warfare tactics and mobilize a large number of local actions that create inertia for wider action." Nationwide, violence is being recognized as a public health epidemic. The efforts of San Francisco hospitals have raised awareness and created successful models to build upon. Now Marty Diamond, UCSF/Mount Zion's director, is spearheading “One Less Gun, One More Life,” which hopes to capitalize on these models and unite hospitals, community-based organizations, and government and law enforcement officials into an inexorable citywide movement against violence. The first One Less Gun, One More Life Gun Exchange will be held on Saturday, Jan. 17 at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center. (See previous Daybreak story.) A second exchange is slated for February 14 at an undetermined site. By Andrew Schwartz, 1st appeared 1/15/98 |
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