Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=218697
Story Retrieval Date: 5/20/2013 5:39:00 PM CST
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Colette Luke/MEDILL


A surgeon works with CeaseFire to prevent gun violence

by Colette Luke
Mar 14, 2013


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Colette Luke/MEDILL

CeaseFire's Cure Violence initiative was started in 1995 by epidemiologist Dr. Gary Slutkin, who said that violence is an epidemic and could be avoided by stopping the behavior at its source. CeaseFire's approach is to have hospital responders, violence interrupters on the streets and case managers.

With the number of murders in Chicago at 59 this year alone, one surgeon is partnering with CeaseFire to take a different approach at reducing gun violence. The Northwestern Memorial Hospital doctor recalls a memory prior to the partnership of a 17-year-old boy who was shot in the chest and was ok, and then two weeks later shot in the spine by the same people and is now paralyzed from the neck down. She says if CeaseFire had been involved, the boy's life might have been saved.