It all began when…

Trauma surgeon Amy Goldberg came to the realization early in her career that the treatment for gun violence had to extend beyond hospital walls. A teenage boy whose life she saved in the early 1990s made her see that prevention was a necessity. When Goldberg met him for a follow-up appointment, she learned that at 16 he had already dropped out of school.

“It occurred to me that I may not have made as much of an impact on this patient as I thought I had—that I had actually sent him back to the community that had gotten him shot to begin with,” Goldberg recalls. “I had just done an operation that I was impressed with but probably not really extended his life.”

She decided to do something about that. In 2005, shortly after becoming the head of trauma surgery at Temple University Hospital, she recruited Scott Charles to help her develop violence prevention initiatives. Six months later, they launched Cradle to Grave, a hospital-based education program that uses stories of real victims to give an inside perspective on what happens when someone is shot. To date, the program has taught more than 13,000 people — most of whom are at-risk youth who live in neighborhoods plagued by violence — about the human toll caused by gun violence.

Since then, Temple University Hospital’s trauma department has launched a number of initiatives aimed at preventing and ameliorating the harms related to gun violence. In 2013, they launched the Turning Point program, which connects victims of gunshot wounds to counseling and social service resources in an effort to help reduce the likelihood of retaliation and/or re-injury. Two years later, in collaboration with TUH’s emergency medicine department, they launched Fighting Chance, which teaches residents in areas with high levels of community violence how to administer first aid to victims of penetrating trauma. In 2016, the trauma department introduced the Safe Bet program, which distributes free gun locks — no questions asked — to local residents with the goal of preventing unintentional shootings among Philadelphia children.

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