Southland RISE celebrates 5 years of violence prevention and recovery

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 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 joint resources allow Southland RISE to foster community collaborations and create interventions that wouldn’t be possible through any one organization.

“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.”

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

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.” Understanding the differing impacts of trauma, even within a single neighborhood, would allow for resources to be directed to individuals and families who are most at risk.

“We want a city that loves us as much as we love it,” Gatewood said. “We want a city that takes care of us as much as we take care of it.”

Dr. Oyinkansola Okubanjo, an Advocate Health Care emergency medicine physician and medical director of DEI for Advocate Medical Group, also shared how community organizations – like the ones funded through Southland RISE grants – helped shape her as a teen growing up on the south side.

“It kept all of us out of trouble,” said Okubanjo, who credits Live from the Heart – a program that shows students heart transplant surgery and educates on healthcare careers through a partnership with Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and Advocate Christ Medical Center – with sparking her interest in medicine. She now treats patients coming to Advocate Christ’s emergency room.

“At the end of this program, they said to me, ‘You can do this too,’” she said. “We need community organizations.”

The Southland RISE event continued with a series of panels and workshops, which 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 round of summer funding 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.”