07-04-2025
Preventing violence can start in the hospital with new Travis County program
Every day, Dell Seton Medical Center social worker Ayanna Ransom gets notified by nurses or doctors in the emergency department that someone who has come in with evidence of violence — either a gun shot, a stab wound or signs of abuse. A counterpart at Dell Children's Medical Center is also getting these calls.
They are at the heart of Travis County's Hospital-based Violence Intervention Program, which is part of the $500,000 Safer Travis County resolution approved by Travis County commissioners in November 2022. Half of that funding went into this two-year pilot program with Ascension Texas.
"We designed the HVIP program to create a gun violence prevention ecosystem, not only providing world-class medical care here in the hospital, but take that care outside these four walls and connect the survivors with community-based support services," Travis County Judge Andy Brown said Thursday, when city, county and community leaders toured the Dell Seton program.
The goal, he said, is to prevent the victim from being reinjured or committing a violence-based crime themselves.
The program launched in October and in six months has served more than 350 people. Fifteen percent of those victim's cases were related to gun violence, said Laura Fohn, president of Dell Seton. The two hospitals chosen to pilot this program are the highest level of trauma care in Austin and the safety net hospitals for adults and children.
In 2024, acts of violence were among the top three causes for trauma care at Dell Seton and represented 10% of the total injuries, Fohn said. "Relationships, teamwork and collaboration are essential to providing comprehensive care to our patients," she said.
Ransom's job is to meet with the victims of violence who come into the emergency room and offer them a path toward a different life, she said.
Most of them want the help and take it, she said: "What I offer them is an opportunity for change."
"Clients are relieved," she said, to be offered the help. "They don't know where to look or where to ask for help."
Often, she's meeting them in the emergency room and then does follow-up calls. Her goal is to de-escalate the current situation and prevent a future situation. She does that by providing wraparound services, whether that is mentorship, job training or trauma recovery.
"We get them out of situations, and we make sure the social determinates of health are met," Ransom said. Those are things such as housing, food security, employment and community support.
While this is a two-year pilot program, stakeholders like Ransom, Fohn and Jenny Laing, director of strategic operations for Ascension Texas, would like to see the program grow to have 24-hour coverage at even more hospitals. Success will be measured in both the number of people the program helps and in decreasing the rates of people coming back to the hospital for violence-related injuries, Laing said.
While this effort joins the human trafficking program at Dell Seton, along with the other social work and case management happening at the hospital, more additions would be welcomed, including a program to more intensively help with overdose prevention, Dell Seton Emergency Department Director Theresa Rice said.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Travis County programs reduces violence by intervening in the hospital
