The Violence Recovery Program: The Development and Implementation of a Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program in a Level One Trauma Center on the South Side of Chicago

Gun violence and structural inequities weaken protective factors that help keep communities healthy and safe. A comprehensive and collaborative public health approach to violence prevention that prioritizes community partnerships is needed to address social determinants of health and structural characteristics that often provide the context for community violence. Hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIP) serve as a critical component of this public health approach. In Chicago’s South Side, local activism and key stakeholders within the university, philanthropic, municipal, and communities contributed to the launch of an HVIP at the University of Chicago Medicine on May 1, 2018, called the Violence Recovery Program. This chapter first chronicles the structural roots of inequality and violence on the South Side of Chicago that explain why an HVIP is needed in the community. Next, the chapter explains the processes needed to develop, implement, and evaluate a multidisciplinary HVIP model that leverages the cultural capital of credible messengers to promote trauma-informed care to violently injured patients, assess their immediate risk for reinjury and retaliation, and connect them to wrap-around services to help aid comprehensive recovery. The COVID-19 pandemic swept through the world during the early stages of the Violence Recovery Program, and the chapter includes a section that describes the ways in which the pandemic offered a time to reimagine, revisit, and expand the program and build partnerships to better serve patients’ needs by addressing the social and structural determinants of health that underlie community violence. The chapter concludes by articulating future goals for the Violence Recovery Program and providing next steps to help the program grow.