Production and distribution of city club forums and ideastream.

Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black, Fond of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Good afternoon.

Welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Thursday, December 12.

And I'm Jen Johns executive director of the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland in northern Ohio, or a CNO.

Today's forum is the Colleen Shaughnessy Memorial Forum and part of the City Club's Health Equity and authors in Conversation series, The Academy of Medicine is the region's medical society, representing over 6700 physicians and medical students.

Founded in 1824, today's City Club Forum is the culmination of our bicentennial year in honor of the Academy's long public health history in Cleveland.

Our board of directors chose firearm injury as the number one public health crisis for our organization to address.

Today, we have the privilege of hearing from Dr. Brian H. Williams, trauma surgeon and author of the new book The Bodies Keep Coming.

Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon.

On Racism, Violence and How We Heal.

Dr. Williams has treated gun violence victims for more than two decades as a Harvard trained physician and served as professor of trauma and acute care surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine.

He is also an Air Force Academy graduate, a former congressional health policy advisor and a nationally recognized leader at the intersection of public policy, structural racism, gun violence and health equity.

Hearing of his credentials, it's easy to believe that Dr. Williams has seen it all.

In his book, he ushers us right into the trauma bay where the wounds of a national emergency a.

He draws a line between white supremacy, gun violence and the bodies.

He tries to revive.

Friends, I admit this is a heavy topic, but it's an important one.

Just this past week in Cuyahoga County, we announced a 25% increase in child fatalities from firearms Deaths by homicide is now the number one killer of Cleveland's teenagers.

If there was ever a time to welcome Dr. Williams to the city club, it is now to hear how he came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice and what true healing looks like in our communities.

Now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland please join me in welcoming Dr. Brian Williams.

Jan, thank you for that very, very kind introduction.

And I also want to thank you all for being here.

It's truly an honor to be able to be part of this city club like you've had this amazing speakers.

To be part of that legacy is very humbling.

But also to be part of the bicentennial celebration of AMC.

You know, Samson reached out to me and speaking to Cynthia and Jen about this event.

I asked, like, Why me?

Why do you want me to be part of this, this event?

And looked at the history of the AMC and you've already done amazing things when it comes to advocacy.

You look at environmental injustice and public health and education.

So what can I add to that as far as advocacy?

And the board made it easy.

You chose gun violence as your topic, and that's something I can talk about.

And I want to acknowledge the courage it takes to choose as a topic because it is a very divisive issue, but one we cannot ignore.

I want you to go back for a moment to the 2020.

In the early days of the pandemic, around this time, but before there was a vaccine.

If you're in health care, we were still fighting to get PPE.

Many of us wondering if we're going to cast this once in a century virus and die.

One morning, my phone rang.

It was my mother, and I don't know if you have this spidey sense, I'm going to get a phone call and it's not the right time of day or the right dear the week to get this phone call.

I had this pit in my stomach when I answered the phone.

My mother says, Brian, tomorrow your dad and I are going to Florida.

I said, Okay, mom, it's not a good time for you and Dad to be traveling anywhere.

We're in the midst of this pandemic.

You're elderly.

You have these co-morbidities.

Please do not do that, she said.

It doesn't matter.

Your dad wants to go and we're going.

And my dad wants to do something.

He's going to do it.

This, she says it's her cousin.

She's been shot.

Go on to learn that my cousin was in an abusive relationship, was shot and killed by her abuser in front of their three kids.

So then it made sense.

And I just wish she had led with that.

It's what reacted differently.

About a year and a half ago, my sister called me.

Now my sister and I, like my wife, speaks to her sister and best friend almost daily.

My sister and I, we don't talk that often.

We talk enough that when she does call again, I knew this was not going to be a good conversation and she got right to it.

Brian told me.

Another one of my cousins has been shot and he was shot and killed in his front yard.

And to this day, the killer has not been identified.

So when I talk about gun violence, it's usually very easy for me because I generally talk about it's the lens of a trauma surgeon.

I use the language of academia and advocacy.

I really talk about what it means to me personally.

I generally avoid doing that and I don't know why I've done that in the past, but it has been harder to talk about it.

But I do recognize that when I share those stories with you, they probably land differently because I'm the one sharing it, right?

I'm up here in a suit and tie at the power of this podium.

I have the mic.

I get this glowing intro.

You've been told to come see me.

So when I tell them, it may resonate with you differently than if I were someone else.

And that is power.

That is power.

So today I want to talk about power.

The power of silence, the power of the narratives that we tell ourselves, but also the power that we as doctor advocates or anyone that wants to make a difference.

The power you have to make a difference, particularly when it comes to community gun violence, because their silence is violence.

The narratives that we are telling ourselves are disconnected from the reality.

What is actually happening.

That doesn't mean we are powerless to make a difference.

Within 24 hours of this form today, nearly 60% of gun homicide victims will be young black men, 60% intimate partner violence.

We know that if there is easy access to a weapon, a woman is five times more likely to be shot and killed by her or her abuser.

For black women is three times more likely than their white counterparts.

Like my cousins and as Jim mentioned, firearms, the number one killer of Cleveland children and teens.

You may know that this is the number one killer of all American children and teens.

That inflection point happened in 2020, exceeding motor vehicle collisions.

Did you know that for the decade prior to that, guns were the leading cause of death for black children and teens and those their deaths?

Those stories did not receive nearly the same amount of attention.

So that's why when I talk about gun violence.

If we're going to end this epidemic, we have to also work to promote racial justice.

These two are interlinked.

We can't treat them separately.

And this is where the power of narratives have been doing a disservice, because it is easy for us to deny and to dismiss and to discredit any challenges to the narratives that we are fed.

The narratives that are dominant deny the challenges and the challenges whoever is bringing that message.

But understand, over here today, gun violence is a public health crisis.

It's not my words.

Okay?

The surgeon general put out a report this year that said that there are any number of national public health and medical societies, organizations, nations that have been saying the same thing.

It is a public health crisis.

And if we want to address that, we need to honor the value of all lives.

All right.

So go back eight years.

June 12th, 2016, mass shooting at the Orlando Pulse nightclub.

Two weeks later, June 5th, Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot and killed point blank range by a police officer is restrained on the ground.

July 6th, Philando Castile shot and killed in his car in Minnesota.

You may not know about this.

You may know about this one, Right.

He was pulled over for a traffic stop, did everything he was told to do, said, Hey, I am a licensed concealed carry weapons in the car.

I do have a license.

As he's reaching for his car registration, as he was told to do.

He was shot multiple times.

One pierced his heart, bled out and died in the front seat.

And this happened many times over the prior year and a half.

But that one was streamed live on Facebook.

His girlfriend was in the passenger seat recording the encounter.

Her young daughter was in the backseat.

So a lot of people saw him bleed to death as it happened.

And that was sort of a tipping point that year because as you can expect, there was outrage from all sides on this.

However, there was a curious silence about the quintessential good guy with a gun who did everything right and still was shot and killed because of one critical difference in his racial demographic.

Next day, protests rescheduled all across the country.

Peaceful protests, mind you.

You may not remember this, but if you do, you may remember the one that happened in Dallas.

That is the one that turned violent.

There are about 400 protesters in downtown Dallas.

Police were there providing security for this event.

And it was also the night that I happened to be on call as a trauma surgeon in a house at Parkland Hospital.

We don't know how trauma centers work.

There is always a dedicated trauma team in the hospital.

24, seven surgeons, nurses.

You have trainees as well, therapists.

So that was my night that was there initially.

It was my night off.

My partner asked me if I would take a shift, so I did.

And I think about that decision, that decision to say yes and how that changed everything moving forward.

Because at the event, there was an Army veteran who decided he had had enough and he wanted to seek his revenge by killing police officers.

He specifically wanted to kill white police officers.

And we know this because the negotiator that when they had them cornered, he told them all this.

This is all recording.

It's public record.

But that was his goal.

Now, he doesn't end up shooting several police officers that were in uniform.

Not all of them were white.

But that was that was his intent.

And the night began as a moment make for me.

And all of a sudden the pager starts going off and it wouldn't stop.

Multiple gunshot victims coming into the hospital.

And immediately we had to flex to our disaster response.

I'm coming in to the trauma center just as the first police officer was being wheeled around the corner on his gurney.

And I'm thinking, who is shooting police officers?

But then immediately you go back in, you're training and the team does what we're trained to do in these, which is ensure that we can do we can to save lives.

Unfortunately, seven of the officers that were brought to our hospital, three died of their wounds.

Crosstown Hospital received five police officers, two.

This became the largest, last, largest loss of life for U.S. law enforcement since 911.

And it just came to a point where it was very surreal in this hospital because once we activated our disaster response, the hospital went on lockdown.

Our hospital police went to their weapons storage and grabbed a AR 15.

They were patrolling the halls.

If you were visiting the hospital, you were not allowed to walk around.

You had to stay where you were.

You could not get into the at all points of entry were secure.

Never expected to see something like this in a hospital.

And that's what we're doing.

There came a moment where I had to go tell one of the family members, families of one of the deceased police officers what happened.

And this is a conversation I've had too frequently as a trauma surgeon having to tell family members about the death of their child.

And I always, always want to get this right because I do not want to be the person that adds trauma on top of trauma.

So I strive to do it.

Do it right.

Walk into the room.

Chaplain, There is some support of the support.

People deliver this news.

Answer the questions and then I leave and as I'm leaving across from me, probably about some eight feet, there is a police officer standing there on post because they're the response.

Police officers came on duty in off duty, came to the hospital, and then they put one on post at the rooms of all of the family members that were there at the rooms, all of the deceased police officers and the rooms of other officers that were getting treated for non lethal injuries.

And I looked at him, looked at me.

There was this moment where he flashed some recognition of what was going on.

And then I decided that, okay, I just need to take a break from this and we can take a left and right.

Right goes takes you back into the trauma center where the team is doing their work.

And for these disaster responses, there's kind of several phases.

The initial phase where everyone's coming in and these are the life threatening injuries coming in by ambulance that night.

The officers colleagues pick them up off of the road, stuff them in the back of their police cruisers, took off and came to the hospital.

Some arrived just on the rims because their tires were blown out.

You get through that, there's things get slowed down.

This is routine care, taking X-rays, checking labs.

And that's where we were at the point the team did not need me.

So I took a left down this back hallway, never been before.

Walked through these double doors, doors closed behind me.

The silence.

I fell to the floor and I was crying.

I was sobbing, ugly, crying.

You all do not know me because I don't cry.

I do not cry.

There it was the days after the tension really ratcheted up in a national discussion.

Right?

It was Black Lives matter and blue lives matter.

And all lives matter.

And I really have to ask, like, do all lives matter?

Like, what does that mean to you?

Because we live in the most violent high wealth nation when it comes to gun violence.

So do our words match our actions?

And this is the power of Americas.

This is where we need to shift the narrative on gun violence, gun culture, gun ownership so we can prioritize safety over violence.

And I get it.

I get it.

I remember I was 18 years old at the Air Force Academy and we all go to weapons training.

And this is the day where we've just got to learn how to handle and fire an M-16, an M-16.

That is the military version of the AR 15.

I remember I just I felt powerful.

I felt alive.

It was fun.

So I get the allure.

But at 18, I had no idea that little over a decade later, gun violence would intersect with my life.

And my career pretty much in perpetuity.

Did not even foresee that.

Nor can I see that most of my victims would be young black men.

And you see that over and over again.

I tell you, it starts to weigh on you.

It starts to weigh on you.

You don't just have a gun violence problem in this country.

We have multiple gun violence problems, suicide, intimate partner violence, community violence, mass shootings, each have different root causes, require different solutions.

But there is one thing that ties all these together.

That is, if you look at the history of our gun policy or gun policy in this country, it is rooted over centuries with the need to control black communities through disarmament and violence.

Here's where I want you to lean in.

Okay.

Here's where I want you to lean in and just follow me.

Just not opinion here.

I'm going to just say the facts.

Okay?

Our Constitution, great document.

But remember how it came to be in a slave holding society.

The Second Amendment, this bastion of freedom, explicitly excluded enslaved people from owning weapons.

After the Civil War, many Southern states started to enact, quote unquote, black codes.

So these were laws that were supposedly about public safety, but really served to ensure that newly freed black people could not own firearms.

So you want to talk about safety.

If you cannot use the one implement that is the symbol of safety in this country, you are at risk for violence.

And we know that there was a history of racial terror.

Move forward to Jim Crow continued segregation, disenfranchisement, vulnerability to violence.

It looks as though we passed Civil Rights Act of 64.

But even after that is more the 1967 Black Panther Party in Oakland.

Rampant police brutality in their communities.

So to try to protect they were following the law and would open carry weapons, which was legal.

And then they decided that they're going to bring their protests to the state capitol.

They went to the state capitol, followed all the laws open carry.

It made no ruckus afterwards.

This was labeled the Sacramento invasion.

Armed black people that stormed the Capitol and threatened everybody.

And suddenly gun control became a top issue.

The California legislature, backed by the NRA, passed the Mulford Act, signed by then Governor Ronald Reagan, and that effectively disarmed the Black Panther Party and again allowed violence to continue unabated in their communities.

Fast forward to where we are now, the Stand Your Ground laws ever.

After Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida and George Zimmerman was acquitted.

And as a side note, the weapon Zimmerman used to kill Trayvon, he auctioned that off reportedly, he sold it for seven, seven figures.

So just think about what that says about the value of all lives.

But these laws now are so skewed in their impact.

And this is again, this is data from the Department of Justice and individual states that race does matter.

If you are a shooter that is black, you claim stand your ground.

And if you don't do stand your ground is this basically says if you feel like you are threatened in public, you are allowed to use lethal force.

It's an extension of something called the Castle Doctrine, which means if you're in your house, your castle, and you feel a threat, you are allowed to use lethal force.

Stand your Ground extends the castle doctrine from your house to pretty much any public place.

So if you feel threatened, you shoot until somebody in certain states.

That's a very simplistic way of looking at it.

But this number shows that if you're black, do that.

You claim stand your ground that you think is most likely to be deems unjustified in a court of law and you will go to jail if the victim is black.

More likely than not, that shooting is to be consider will be deemed justified and you will not go to jail.

So the race of the shooter and the victims do matter for laws that are on the books right now that impact the lives of somebody across the country.

And an interesting thing about Stand your Ground laws.

These were initially laws that were put on the books to allow women who were being victimized by their domestic abusers to use lethal force to protect themselves, because there was a time that you could not do that.

It has evolved what it is now.

And more stats show that if you are a woman in a abusive relationship and you use a weapon to kill your abuser in self-defense, you are more likely to go to jail than if you are a white man that shoots an innocent person in public and claim stand your ground.

So this this is skewed, right?

We have to fix these policies that are embedded in our culture of gun violence.

This always leads to the question people ask me, well, what are they doing in their communities?

Why can't they end the violence?

Clean it up.

Stop the crowd.

Stop the crime.

Well, we are doing a lot.

There are faceless, nameless people doing the work every day, even here in Cleveland.

My issue last night told me about the Cleveland peacekeepers.

They're doing work right here in Cleveland.

And I do hope that during the Q&A, we'll probably learn about other organizations that are doing the work.

People that are closest to the problem often have the best solutions.

So as a physician advocate, surgeon, advocate, napkin ing all these worlds, I am trying to bring all of what I've done and learn together to be part of the solution.

So if you can accept that gun violence is a public health crisis that demands we uphold the value of all lives, and that we must shift the cultural narratives that dominate about gun violence and gun culture and gun ownership.

And you can accept that we have to acknowledge the intersection of race and guns.

Then, if we are going to do something about ending this epidemic of gun violence, then we must advance racial justice.

It's not the only thing, but without it, we're only going to get so far.

And that is where we all have power.

As physician advocates, community advocates to make a difference in the communities we serve in partnership, collaboration with doctors, nurses, advocates, certainly within your hospital, because not all health systems treat these patients with the humanity that they deserve.

You can advocate at the state and local legislative legislatures which AMS, you know, has been doing a phenomenal job for generations.

But also the most important thing is we also have to be present in the community, advocate in the community.

This all sounds well and good in theory, I get it.

But we just have to show up.

We have to show up.

Now, before I close, I just when I was talking to Sam and Cynthia and Jenny, thank you all for you did make this happen before preparing for this talk a couple of days ago, I was lamenting what I had prepared.

I was just I just was not feeling it.

And I do what I normally do is go to my wife.

She's really good about like looking at something and saying, Now you did do this, and she'll unlock whatever I need to do to make it much better.

And she looked at it, put some red marks on it that she can give back to me.

And she says, What are you worried about?

Just outline something and then go up there and wing it.

And then she just walks off and I said, My wife is great advice and said, That is absolutely horrible advice for an event like this in a place like this.

I was quite shocked because she always nails it just like she nailed it.

A few days after the shooting in Dallas, four days after that shooting, they had scheduled a press conference, one to bring us all together and they contacted me and said, Dr. Williams, we need you at this press conference.

It was just assumed that, of course, as a surgeon, I'll call the night I would be there.

I said, absolutely not.

I had no desire to be in front of cameras talking about this event.

It's been on a constant loop in my head for the day intervening days.

I know I tried to be like, it didn't happen.

I went to work the next day and the next day and the next day just stuffed all that away.

It was trying to ignore it, didn't listen to the radio, didn't watch any news.

I completely checked out, disconnected myself from what was happening around me.

So I said no.

So my wife attacks that.

I just have a press conference today at 1:00 local time.

You may want to watch it.

They ask me to go, but I'm not going to go.

Then a few seconds, my phone is ringing and my wife.

Here's where our stories diverge.

If you ask my wife, she will tell you that she is a very supportive spouse and she is no doubt.

But I will tell you, she can also be a very directive spouse.

And she said, you have to show up, get over yourself.

This is bigger than you.

You've been checked out for the past few days, but you're not listening to what's happening.

People are angry.

People are sad.

People are saying that black people, black men are evil, deserve to die.

Blue lives matter.

Black lives matter.

All lives matter.

But you have to be there.

People need to see or they will never know that on the night that there was a racial justice protest in downtown Dallas and a black sniper shot police officers, that there was a black doctor leading the team in the hospital trying to save some lives.

She understood the power of Meredith not just by what we say, but just by our mere presence.

So I initially said, yeah, I'm not doing it.

This went on for a while and finally I relented.

But tomorrow is coming.

Showed up outside of the press conference area.

We all meet people, get their speaking parts.

There was none for me.

I didn't want to talk.

There's no expectation for me to talk.

If I had answered a question, I would get us lined up who we're going to walk in and I'm just standing there, start seeing these cameras go in to the press conference room and what goes by and says CNN.

And I was like, okay, I'm not signing up for this because we thought this was just going to be a local press conference.

So I texted my wife.

I said, Yeah, I'm out.

No response.

Because after that pep talk she gave me, she just went to the gym and tried to work out, left me there all my rounds.

So we filed in.

And you can imagine we go into a room that is just packed, the whole place rimmed around the back is press cameras, photographers, reporters, hospital personnel.

It was so packed that from the table that we were sitting at up to right about here, there are people sitting on the floor cross-legged.

We sit down, the seven of us, and the press conference is progressing.

And I'm just not sitting right with me.

What I'm hearing about what happened.

And I'm thinking to myself, Brian, are you going to say something right now?

Another part of me said, Well, you do executive fire in the.

And I decided, if not me, then who?

If that's not now, then when?

And then at some point I had a chance to speak and this was just a stream of consciousness and you can Google this video after the form you just.

Dr. Williams Press conference, Dallas 26 It'll pop up.

It was considered of the top ten media moments of that year on several top ten list for 2016.

So it is easy to find, but I just summarize what I said pretty simple in the violence that we need to advance racial justice.

And that moment resonated.

And even to this day, I will still meet people that will say, You know what, Dr. Williams?

I remember you.

I saw your press conference.

That's a reminder that this wasn't my press conference.

There were seven of us.

It was an hour long press conference.

But the one thing that pierced the narrative that took hold was that two minute clip.

And that is a power that each of us has.

So we can all do our part to end the violence and advance justice again.

Thank you to the City Club for having me today.

Congratulations for the AMC bicentennial and thank you all for your presence today.

Thank you for we are about to begin the audience Q&A.

I'm Cynthia Connelly, director of programing here at the City Club.

Today we are joined by Dr. Brian H. Williams, trauma surgeon and author of the book The Bodies Keep Coming Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence and How We Health.

We welcome questions from everyone city club members, guests, students, as well as those joining via our live stream at City Club, Dawg.

If you'd like to text a question for Dr. Williams, please text it to 3305415794 and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

We have a first question, please.

Hi.

We're going to start with a text question.

We saw how traumatic COVID 19 was on first responders, nurses, doctors.

How are trauma surgeons faring amidst this gun violence?

Has there been an increase in mental health support?

So how do we, those of us on the front lines of gun violence deal with basically the moral injury that comes with seeing this sort of violence continue unabated all the time?

I will say for me, I did it very poorly for most of my career.

And the Dallas police, it was kind of a turning point where afterwards I finally went to mental health treatment, admitted that I needed someone to see me or someone to help me speak to my colleagues and to what's happening here in Cleveland.

But from many places that I know, they the support is could be better, but not just for the trauma surgeons.

We function as a team, so we nurses and therapists are also seeing this violence occur all the time.

So for many health care professionals, the the treatment and support could be better.

And I'll just end with one story.

One story is that after the shooting, when I'd been going to work, pretending like I was okay, I realized I just needed.

Okay, I just need a couple of days.

I just.

I mean, working nonstop.

I remember I went asked, Sir.

Hey, No, sir, I just need just a couple of days.

But I don't have to come to the hospital.

You.

I'm not asking for FMLA or it's like that.

Just three or four days and I'll be back.

And a response was what?

You're a trauma surgeon.

You just got to get right back to work.

And that was the mentality I had had for a long time.

But I don't feel that way anymore.

Hi, I'm Dr. Hazel Green, Young.

I'm a physician here in Cleveland.

I am probably not going to buy your book because I'm sure it's depressing by far.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hey, help us.

That was not part of the deal when I came here.

But I will say in the end, I that's a valid concern, but I wanted it to be inspiring towards the end.

And my editor, she's really she's really point about, like forcing that out of me.

So I enjoyed your presentation.

I've been to a lot of presentations and talk about the disparities between blacks and whites in America and most of them are depressing.

The numbers are all going in the wrong direction, and I've often felt that the reason we can't solve the gun problem is because of race, and that's why other countries can be successful.

But until we saw the race problem, we're never going to solve the gun problem, in my opinion.

So my question is, since I'm supposed to ask the question, are you optimistic, please tell me something to give me hope that some of these things are going to get better?

Yes, I'm optimistic.

However, we are still have to accept that progress is glacial, right?

It is going to take a long time.

We still have to continue to do the work now.

And one of the reasons why I'm hopeful is when I spent my time working as a health policy adviser in D.C., I spent time working for Senator Chris Murphy at this time working for Speaker Pelosi.

So Democratic offices.

But I tell you, like, there's so much work being done behind the scenes with people that just go to work every day trying to make a better world, a better place, especially in terms of racial justice.

When I walked into a room to work on these bills and things for the time of time, who's Republican or Democrat?

I wouldn't know.

So what we see on TV.

Take it with a grain of salt.

There is a bit of theater there.

I'm not saying ignore it all, but understand there are a lot more people trying to make the world a better place.

And we can't stop doing the work now.

Right.

People have been worked a lot harder for generations before us to get to where we are now.

So I am hopeful because I see people all the time that just do not give up.

Yeah.

Dr. Williams, thanks for being here.

My name is Dr. Charles Modlin.

I'm VP, Chief Health Equity Officer from MetroHealth.

I also want to recognize I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize we have our CEO here, Dr. Christine Alexander, for this, and also Dr. Marie Crandell, our chief trauma chief of trauma surgery and general surgery here.

This this event.

This topic is so important that these executives took their time out to be here because this is something that is high priority.

At Metro Health.

I co-chair our anti-gun violence.

And let me let me just read something that I've heard.

It says some say that gun violence is like a chronic illness that eventually proves fatal.

A young victims may need help getting back on track to break the cycle of violence.

I say all that to point out that statistics show that individuals who are victims of gunshots, one in eight will actually be shot again.

And then after 15 years, it goes up to one in six.

So what we're trying to do at Metro is trying to find our way in terms of how what is the best role that we can play as a leading medical institution of a level one trauma center?

We we have over 6000 traumas a year at MetroHealth.

One one of the things, you know, we can be a convener of many organizations that are working in this space.

You know, Cleveland Peacemakers, for example.

We can sponsor organizations financially and with human resources.

But one thing that has been proposed that and I'd like to know what your opinion is about this in terms of best practices, is that physicians, nurses or caregivers need to be trained in terms of how to recognize somebody at risk for becoming a gun violence, gun gun violence victim.

There are different training programs, you know, to train caregivers in terms of how to recognize that.

Have you seen any best practices that we could adopt at MetroHealth to help train our caregivers?

We have 9000 caregivers to be aware of somebody who is at risk of being a gun violence victim or being a perpetrator.

So I have to answer that question in a couple of ways.

First, if we recognize that by the time they get into the health system, it's too late.

We are we within the trauma centers.

We are a barometer of what's happening within the community.

So that's where the intervention needs to occur.

That's where the collaboration needs to occur to address these systemic issues.

And I feel that that's where medicine, academia can be a great partner, right?

If you can bring the the numbers and the expertise and the resources work in collaboration with those that probably are really good ideas about what needs to be done, That's how we can make it make a difference.

As far as training, the training the trainees, I mean, I recommend this one is called confirm that that was put out.

I'm not going to call these best practices but like certainly things to consider.

But let me give a shout out to safe.

This is a scrubs against firearm so such as firearm injury.

Exactly.

Lastly, a lesson he stands for.

But they're working on these sort of best practices that we can use to teach students and residents.

So the work is happening, is start is starting to begin now.

And that's what I want to go back to, how it's important to understand that things happen slowly, right, Because we passed the bipartisan Safe for Communities Act in 2022.

That was the most significant gun safety bill in a generation.

Last time something like that happened had been 30 years ago.

Right.

And people that thought that was it.

So we have to keep making incremental steps forward to make a difference.

But I truly believe that we need to be better integrated between the health systems and the communities to make a difference, to in the systemic issues that lead to recidivism and injury in the first place.

How you doing?

My name is Mike Jones.

My question is, we talked about narratives earlier.

Right.

And I just want to set the stage to my question.

Like I'm a suburban kid.

I grew up, graduated from Denver High School.

I'm also a formerly incarcerated person then and I did four and a half years in prison.

When I got out of prison, I moved to Mansfield, Ohio, which is a heck of a small country town.

Can we ever get out of?

Well, I moved there because my ex-wife moved there live there.

Right.

So there's 88 counties in Ohio, 7575 of them have less than 3% of people that look like me.

So I've been in all these little small towns, sundown towns.

And if you go 40 minutes in any direction from Cleveland, you will hit one of those sundown towns.

Right?

And so the way they police in these sundown towns and even at my school when I grew up in the suburbs is vastly different than the message that they give to the kids in inner city.

For example, you steal a car in the in the suburbs.

You are considered a person that was joyriding.

Correct.

But the city council, the mayor in Cleveland, kids steal cars, not at gunpoint because it's a crime opportunity.

They are violent offenders.

So what are you telling the children when you have a school shooting, mass shooting out in Chardon where nobody that looks like me really lives and they don't put no metal detectors in that school.

But every inner city school here has a metal detector.

And the only mass shooting that happened here was by somebody that didn't look like me or my children.

Right.

That's the issue.

So what's the message in that the city council and the county people should be given to our children so they don't digest and believe that they are violent?

Because that's the message.

And coming from adults, that's not the message coming from children.

They act as if the children are more violent than the adults.

That's the message here in Cleveland.

So how do we change that narrative?

So now you just got into generations of injustice within the criminal justice system and how we've chosen to criminalize teenage boys and girls who are black.

And it's been enduring for a long time.

And you mentioned about mass shootings.

I want to touch upon that because they get a lot of extra attention and I get.

Let's be clear.

Any preventable death due to guns is something that we should avoid.

Anyone is more than we should avoid mass shootings account for less than a percent, something less than a half percent of all gun deaths per year.

And actually most mass shootings actually they occur in majority black neighborhoods, segregated neighborhoods.

And this was a handgun.

Ask yourself, why Is it because a mass shooting, by definition, is for more people shot the same incident by the same shooter as a mass shooting?

So they're happening in these neighborhoods with handguns.

What is it about that that we need to address?

Again, the systemic issues and the narrative ignores that and our interventions are focused elsewhere.

We can save a lot more lives by addressing that.

So we're going to ask the questions together.

So our question is, within a hospital system with most of the gunshot victims, even black men and boys.

How do we ensure that the biases do not allow them to be treated like a suspect first and not a patient?

You're thinking the way you say her name.

What's your name?

Jasmine Bowman.

How old are you?

I'm 16, and I go to JFK.

John F Kennedy.

Thank you so much.

So how do we ensure that the victims and survivors and their families are treated with the humanity that they all deserve?

And I've seen the entire spectrum.

I've been in trauma centers in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Boston, Tampa and I talk about my evolution on this issue.

Describe that in the book.

And I totally agree.

We do a very poor job.

Many Times But I have seen amazing work at some places where they recognize that there's is an issue and are being active about trying to correct that.

And one of those is by partnering with community violence interrupters.

Right.

Hospital based intervention.

But get them working together, actually put them on staff and pay them a salary, which, I mean, you people do the work, are not only part of the wraparound services, but you're kind of the facto law enforcement personnel as well because you're helping to mediate violence.

And that should be supported with funds that are continual, not like a three year grant and it disappears.

But you are getting paid.

It's it's it's one last thing I would say in the I'm going to keep going back to this bipartisan Safe Communities Act.

I'm very proud.

I had a chance to work on that.

It was to be a trauma surgeon in the office of the man leading that and to see it come to fruition was quite amazing.

But in that bill, $250 million for Community Violence Intervention program support, you have to know to go get it.

A lot of people don't know that it's actually there and they can request this money to do the work.

So if you're in that sort of space, take a look at what Ohio has to share with you.

Hi.

Thank you so much for being here.

So I'm going to ask you this as a father, and I'm assuming you're a father.

I'm making an assumption here.

And if you have sons or daughters.

That's correct.

What are you saying to them as a dad, in light of what's happening to black bodies and particularly black young men?

My daughter is 13, turns 14 tomorrow, going on 18.

And my wife and I have been very open about discussing these issues with her from a from a young age.

I will tell two stories.

One, when she was about four or five, we were out doing something and asking what's up again?

And she's just out of the blue asking this question, saying, Hey, dad, if if I was living.

She said, What would happen to me if I were living back in Martin Luther King Times.

Luther.

Yes.

They had just had a martin Luther King block in her preschool or kindergarten class or she all into this.

And I'm like, well, what do you mean?

She's like, well, what?

I have to go with the black people or the white people.

My daughter is biracial.

And so she's at that age wrestling with what her racial identity meant and what that meant for her physical safety.

Right.

Which is really hard to take as a father couple about a year, year and a half ago.

She's now she's now in middle school and she she's starts talking to me.

It's a mass shooting at her.

Maybe after you have all something anymore.

Which one?

And I just thought, hey, what what are your kids saying in school about the shooting?

You have any question?

And.

And.

And something happened at a school.

They changed security.

And I said, if something happens, you do this and I'm going to come get you.

She's like, Dad, I know, I know.

I know.

We need to do we do X, Y, Z.

She just rattled off the lockdown drill like it was nothing.

I said, this is kind of sad.

I was proud, but sad that that was her life.

So we've been very open about what it means to be black and a woman and what it means for us, her physical safety and when it comes to gun violence.

I just I don't even know if I'm doing it right.

I have no idea.

I just hope that it's kind of sinking in there.

Every now and then, she'll say something that makes me realize it all.

Maybe we do an okay job.

Then those days, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is my child.

Well, everyday she's good.

We have a fun time this weekend for her birthday.

When?

Oh, thank you very much.

Thank you very much to Dr. Brian Williams for joining us at the City Club.

Forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City Club dot org.

Today's forum is part of the City Club's Health Equity series in partnership with the St Luke's Foundation as well as the authors in Conversation series with Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and Cuyahoga County Public Library.

Our gratitude to the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland and Northern Ohio for their partnership on today's forum.

And congratulations on 200 years of medicine in Cleveland.

Thank you.

Today's forum is also the Colleen Shaughnessy Memorial Forum in Saint Louis.

Native Colleen came to Cleveland in the 1980s as shared Brown's campaign manager and eventually served as deputy director.

She was an enthusiastic, honest and idealistic community builder.

Her energy was contagious and she demanded commitment and social awareness from all of those in her life.

We are grateful to her family, friends and colleagues for honoring her with their endowment gift in support of city programing.

The City club would also like to welcome students.

Joining us from Collinwood High School, Hershey Montessori School, John F Kennedy High School and Lincoln West High School.

Thank you, students, for joining us.

The city club would also like to welcome guests at the table as hosted by the Academy of Medicine Education Foundation.

The Academy of Medicine of Cleveland in Northern Ohio, Case Western Reserve University, Metro Health, the Northeast.

Ohio Black Health Coalition.

St Luke's Foundation.

The Freedom Black.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative and University Hospitals.

Thank you all for being here.

We have a lot coming up at the City Club and you can learn all about these forums at City Club dot org.

And that brings the end to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again to.

Dr. Brian Williams Ancient Economies Forum is adjourned for information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club.

Go to City Club Dawg.

Production and distribution of City club forums and ideastream Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc..