YA!’s Impact in Focus in Guardian –
Youth Alive, whose methods are now used around the country, first developed the hospital-based approach to gun violence more than 30 years ago in Oakland.
An article out this week from The Guardian provides a comprehensive look at the hospital-based violence prevention and healing work Youth ALIVE! has been doing in Oakland for over 30 years. The piece discusses our commitment to meeting victims with urgency, at their hospital-bedsides, at their time of greatest shock and fear, and highest need. It features interviews with Caught in the Crossfire client Josh Hatcher, YA! Intervention Specialist Carlos Jackson and YA! Advocacy Director Gabriel Garcia, as well as Kyle Fischer from the HAVI. Josh describes the impact Carlos had, and continues to have, on his recovery after violence.
The article also describes the influence of Youth ALIVE!’s tireless advocacy for our partner programs in the effort to make hospital-based peer violence intervention reimbursable by Medicaid and Medi-Cal. Read the Guardian article.
Highlights from The Guardian:
These hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) dispatch “intervention specialists” like Carlos to their bedsides to offer support, redirect them away from retaliation and connect them with the services they need to rebuild their lives: counseling, finding safer housing, getting insurance, enrolling in school, navigating bureaucratic paperwork or simply helping with rides to doctor’s appointments or the store.
And it’s effective, advocates say. Forty per cent of those who survive a violent injury will become victims again within five years, according to Gabriel Garcia, policy andadvocacy director for Youth Alive. “But with our services,” he said, “that gets cut down to 2%.”