The City of Mobile recently announced a new partnership with the University Hospital and the Mobile County Health Department aimed at reducing violent crimes. The City will establish the area’s first Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program (HVIP) intended to combat cycles of violent crime and retaliation by engaging victims of violence as they are being treated in the hospital. The program also aims to connect victims and their families to long-term services and support.
The new initiative coming to Mobile’s hospitals aims to connect victims with community-based services such as mentoring opportunities, follow-up care and assistance and case management, which all currently are available in Mobile, but will be of greater access to victims through the new program.
Curtis Graves is the Deputy Director of public safety for the City of Mobile. He said the resources provided for victims of gun violence are varied depending on the situation.
“The goal is to connect them to a number of different resources,” Graves said. “For example, oftentimes people who come into hospitals with gunshot wounds often do not have health insurance. Connecting them to our public health partners here in our city that provide a number of resources for families that are indigent or just in need of some type of service that they may not have access to, and being able to direct them to those services really impact the family in such a way that you can help in some way.”
Graves said addressing these needs with immediacy is one of the most important factors in preventing further violence.
“One of the things that we can do with certainty is address the needs of individuals who come in with gunshot wounds when they come in with gunshot wounds,” Graves said. “It's hard to predict where something bad is going to happen, but when it has happened, it's important to make sure that you have resources on the ground where they are during that golden hour of need.”
In the United States, Alabama has the third highest rate of gun deaths, and the fourth highest rate of gun homicides nationally. This is according to the website EveryTown For Gun Safety. The City of Mobile’s new HVIP aims to address these statistics to combat further violence in the community.
“The hope that I have for this program is that it is one of many pieces that we put together in this city to address our need to improve safety in our community, because we know when people feel safe, then we can actually do much more than what we're currently doing. Cities thrive when there's a sense of safety,” Graves said.
In addition to the program’s implementation in the city’s hospitals the City of Mobile’s Office of Public Safety is also expanding youth violence prevention efforts through the Mobile Parks and Recreation Department and new community partnerships.
To learn more about the new initiatives throughout the City of Mobile, click here.
