Southland RISE celebrates 5 years of violence prevention and recovery efforts in Chicagoland

Video Transcript

FRANKLIN COSEY-GAY, PHD, MPH: In 2019, inspired by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's hospital working group, Chicago HEAL, the University of Chicago Medicine and Advocate Health Care formed Southland RISE, which stands for Resilience Initiative to Strengthen and Empower.

Gun violence and the resulting trauma to families and communities is a public health crisis. Addressing root causes and long-standing inequities that increase factors for violence requires engaged communities, collaboration and sustainable programs.

OYINKANSOLA OKUBANJO, MD: Supporting community organizations that are working every day to understand the needs of their communities — who better to lead the way in helping to keep young people and their families safe, engaged, and empowered? Over the past five years, Southland RISE has awarded small grants to more than 50 community organizations on the South Side. Whether that focus is on youth housing, mentorship, healing through the arts, or building skills and job placement, these organizations are vital to building resilience, encouraging healing from within our communities.

CLINTON BOYD JR., PHD: We believe that when you improve outcomes for Black men and boys, you strengthen Black women and girls, families and the community at large. With the funding that Fathers, Families & Healthy Communities receive from Southland RISE, we were able to deliver transformative services to Black fathers to improve their quality of life and make a positive impact in the lives of their children, families and communities.

GLENDA L. LASHLEY, LCSW, CADC: The greatest strength of our program lies in the capacity to address the summer slide phenomenon in any city communities by offering captivating, age-appropriate books to children and implementing an engaging summer reading program.

KIM MIILLER, PSYD: Meeting the needs of survivors of violence requires more than care for their physical wounds. Our trauma recovery support begins with developing a relationship with patients and their families at the bedside. We can connect them to resources and wrap-around services that include social and behavioral health services, individual and group therapy, and psychiatric consultation. We also share information about additional services provided through our hospital's trauma recovery programs and the community outreach partners we work with.

KENNY WHITE: Several of my patients have received support through the Southland RISE Emergency Relief Fund including help with renting, housing relocation, utilities, and even grocery support. I remember one of my patients who was unable to work due to gunshot wounds and lost her job. Generous funding provided by Southland RISE lifted a financial burden off my patient's shoulders.

TINA COOPER, LCSW, CADC: The Southland RISE Street Outreach and Hospital Response Training Curriculum brings together the perspectives, lived experiences and professional knowledge of hospital frontline and street outreach staff. We at Metropolitan Family Services, Metropolitan Peace Initiatives, worked with staff from both hospitals and street outreach to design a learning experience that builds trust and community, creates mutual understanding, and encourages an open dialogue.

JORDAN PENMAN: The trainings create spaces to gain a better understanding of our different roles, responsibilities, and day-to-day work, and this has improved communication between our hospital's trauma recovery and community outreach staff members.

LATANYA AYTCH: I came away from the training with a better understanding of how hospital response and violence recovery staff support patients, and how I can use what I learned and the new connections I made with hospital staff to connect my clients and their families with resources.

FRANKLIN COSEY-GAY, PHD, MPH: We know that what we're addressing when it comes to community violence is just the tip of the iceberg. It's connected to structural issues, resources, economic disinvestment, poor education opportunities, and policies and practices tied to race and racism that go back multiple generations. What's inspiring about Southland RISE is the coordination that this initiative has generated between hospital-based violence intervention groups, as well as community violence interventionists, which include street outreach professionals, victim advocates and case managers.

These are individuals who possess the social and cultural capital through their lived experience to connect to survivors of violence and their families to much needed resources. Have incredible people at the frontline that look like you, that come from your community, that understand not only the interpersonal trauma, but structural trauma.

Using a healing-centered trauma approach is important. Through Southland Rise and the resulting partnerships, we're supporting both the immediate and long-term needs of our community ecosystem of care.

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For the past five years, Southland RISE has brought together hospitals, community leaders and other stakeholders to find solutions to violence on Chicago’s South Side and in surrounding suburbs.

On March 21, the collaborative marked its fifth anniversary with an all-day community summit. Funded through a grant from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA), the event celebrated the progress made through local partnerships and identified ways to continue bolstering violence prevention efforts across the Chicagoland area.

Launched in 2019 as a collaborative between the University of Chicago Medicine and Advocate Health Care, Southland RISE (Resilience Initiative to Strengthen and Empower) integrates the violence recovery and trauma programs of the two health systems. These shared resources allow Southland RISE to foster community collaborations and create interventions that wouldn’t be possible through any one organization.

“Gun violence and the resulting trauma are a public health crisis,” said Franklin Cosey-Gay, PhD, MPH, Executive Director of Community & External Affairs at UChicago Medicine. “To address the root causes of violence, we must collaborate and engage with communities to build sustainable programs. By gathering stakeholders at this summit, we are marking an important milestone for Southland RISE and furthering our mission to combat longstanding inequities.”

“Meeting the needs of survivors of violence requires more than caring for their physical wounds,” said Kim Miiller, PsyD, Advocate’s director of trauma recovery and resilience. “We build relationships with patients and connect them with resources as part of a sustained process of trauma recovery support. Our summit is an opportunity to share lessons from effective programs and interventions and apply them in innovative ways to improve lives across Chicagoland.”

Titled “Paths to Resilience: Navigating Trauma Through Collaboration and Innovation,” the fifth-anniversary summit was held at the Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center on Chicago’s far South Side.

The event featured opening remarks from Chicago Deputy Mayor Garien Gatewood, who emphasized the importance of identifying the effects of violence at a “hyperlocal level.” He said understanding the differing impacts of trauma — even within a single neighborhood — would allow resources to be directed to individuals and families who are most at risk.

In an appeal to his fellow Chicagoans, Gatewood said: “We want a city that loves us as much as we love it. We want a city that takes care of us as much as we take care of it.”

Abdullah Pratt, MD, holds a microphone and talks during a fireside chat with journalist Adrienne Samuels Gibbs. — UChicago Medicine's Abdullah Hasan Pratt, MD, discusses gun violence and health disparities during a fireside chat with journalist Adrienne Samuels Gibbs (right). Their conversation was part of a fifth-anniversary summit for Southland RISE (Resilience Initiative to Strengthen and Empower) held on March 21.

The March 21 summit also included a fireside chat with Abdullah Hasan Pratt, MD, an emergency medicine physician at UChicago Medicine and a native of the Woodlawn neighborhood just south of the UChicago campus.

As Faculty Director for Community Engagement at UChicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, Pratt discussed the need to address trauma holistically and prioritize interventions that support violence prevention in addition to recovery. That’s part of why he founded MedCEEP (Medical Careers Exposure and Emergency Preparedness), a nonprofit that works to eliminate health disparities on the South Side and support youth who want to pursue careers in medicine. MedCEEP includes the TRAP (Trauma Recovery & Prevention of) Violence Program, which provides resources and strategies for students to navigate unaddressed trauma.

Trauma centers, said Pratt, must work toward comprehensive solutions for violence — the same way hospitals combat cancer or other illnesses: “We need to approach violence with that same equity and seriousness.”

The Southland RISE event continued with a series of panels and workshops that convened community and nonprofit leaders, city officials, social service professionals, physicians and public health experts. Those discussions focused on the impact of trauma and the importance of recognizing structural violence; basic first response skills for treating gunshot wounds; community collaborations and street outreach; and many other topics.

Xavier Ramey, CEO of the social impact consulting firm Justice Informed, emceed the summit.

Over the past five years, Southland RISE has distributed $650,000 in grant funding to more than 50 community-based violence intervention programs on Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs. Applications for this year’s summer funding round are being accepted through April 10, and awardees will be announced in early May.

With funding provided by ICJIA, Southland RISE also administers an emergency relief fund to support those impacted by trauma and violence — helping more than 100 individuals and their families to date.

Southland RISE was inspired by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s Chicago HEAL Initiative (Hospital Engagement, Action and Leadership), which urges Chicagoland’s healthcare providers to help reduce community violence and address healthcare needs associated with violence recovery.

“This is lifesaving work, and we need it now more than ever — which is why today’s summit and your dedication to this issue is so important,” Durbin said in a video message played at the event. “Together, we can make our communities safer and more resilient.”