Safe Streets Baltimore: New Study Shows Program Is An Effective Public Health Approach To Reducing Gun Violence

Over the past ten years, Baltimore has made significant progress reducing violence. Homicide is at its lowest level since 1978, and juvenile homicides and shootings are down nearly 70% from 2001.

The Health Department’s Safe Streets Baltimore initiative is an important component of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s strategy to reduce homicide and shooting rates. Launched in 2007, Safe Streets is an evidence-based, public health initiative that intervenes in crises, mediates disputes between individuals, and intercedes on group disputes to prevent violent events.

Safe Streets currently operates in Cherry Hill and McElderry Park, but today, I joined Mayor Rawlings-Blake in announcing the expansion of this vital program. Safe Streets Baltimore will be expanding to additional communities as a result of a $2.2 million dollar award from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.  The funding will also be used to expand the initiative to two additional communities that are disproportionately impacted by violence. Interested community groups can review the RFP at http://baltimorehealth.org/rfp.html.

Our expansion of Safe Streets is supported by the release of a new study today by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health demonstrating the program’s effectiveness. As noted in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s New Public Health blog, this study demonstrates clearly that a public health intervention can be a successful means for reducing youth violence. Violence is a learned behavior, and as a learned behavior, it can be prevented using the same methods we use to stop the spread of disease.

Some of the key findings of this study include:

•         In all four neighborhoods (McElderry Park, Ellwood Park, Madison-Eastend, and Cherry Hill) the program was associated with a statistically significant decline in either homicides or nonfatal shootings, or both.

•         Overall, researchers estimated the program prevented at least 5 homicide incidents and 35 nonfatal shooting incidents.

•         In Cherry Hill, the program was associated with a 56 percent decline in homicides and a 34 percent decline in nonfatal shootings.

•         The program was associated with a 34 percent drop in nonfatal shootings in Elwood Park.

•         Researchers estimated that Safe Streets Baltimore was responsible for a 26 percent reduction in homicides in McElderry Park over the nearly three and a half years the program was in place. This site did not experience a homicide during the first 23 months of program implementation.

I would like to thank those who have invested in Safe Streets and urge local foundations and the business and faith communities to continue to step up and invest in this initiative – which has been proven to save lives.

We can be a safe city, but we must continue to support those programs which are contributing to our success. While the Health Department has been awarded funds for expansion of Safe Streets, additional funding is needed to sustain the existing two sites past this fiscal year.  The Health Department will use these positive evaluation results to seek additional funding for Cherry Hill and McElderry Park. I join the Mayor in urging local faith, non-profit, and businesses to lend their support to this vital initiative.

To view the full report on the effectiveness of our Safe Streets program, or for more information or to find out how to apply to become a Safe Streets site, please visit the Health Department’s Website, www.baltimorehealth.org/safestreets.

Take Care, B’more!

Baltimore City Health Department Releases First Latino Health Report

As the Health Department works to reduce disparities and improve the health of all Baltimoreans, it is important for us to have a solid understanding of the strengths and health challenges faced by particular groups. As the fastest growing segment of our city, Latino Baltimoreans are one population whose health status we must examine more closely. To this end, we have released the first ever examination of the health status and trends among Baltimore’s Latino residents.

In general, Baltimore’s Latino population is ethnically diverse and relatively young (median age is 27 years, compared to 35 for Baltimore overall). The report revealed some encouraging news about the status of this group, who were found to have lower overall mortality and infant mortality rates. It also revealed that fewer Latinos are smokers – 16 percent of adults, compared to 28 percent of all Baltimoreans.

However, Latinos in Baltimore still face a number of significant health challenges, including lack of health insurance and medical homes, high incidence of binge alcohol drinking, and death by accident - which is the third leading cause of death among this group.

The report was released yesterday during an event held at Baltimore Medical System’s Highlandtown Healthy Living Center, which sits in one of the largest Latino communities in Baltimore. BMS has served between 8,500 and 9,000 patients for whom English isn’t their first language. They employ bilingual physicians and other staff, many of whom also have multi-cultural backgrounds that help them understand the needs of patients from other countries. For Baltimore's growing refugee population, BMS also provides foreign language interpretation for initial health screenings and ongoing medical care.

As one of the largest providers of health care to the Latino community, Baltimore Medical System has long recognized the importance of providing culturally appropriate healthcare and language access services. President & CEO Jay Wolvovsky supports their mission to provide healthcare to all residents of the community – especially the underserved. Over the years, the demographics in Baltimore City have changed dramatically, and BMS has changed with them. Today, 25% of their staff is bilingual, and they offer many services that help patients overcome barriers to care.

I would like to thank Baltimore Medical Systems for their strong support of Latino healthcare in Baltimore and their partnership in the release of The Health of Latinos in Baltimore City.

For the first time, we see how Latinos living in Baltimore City compare to city residents as a whole, and Latinos statewide and nationwide. In bringing together data about Latino health, this report can serve as a tool for public health efforts to advance the health of the Baltimore City Latino community. It’s my hope that this report also will spark conversations about setting priorities for action and new ideas for change.

Check out the full report, available in English and Spanish, on our Website. And here are links to media coverage of the release in the Baltimore Sun newspaper and WJZ TV.

Meeting People Where They Are: The Needle Exchange Program

The best outcomes in public health often happen when we meet people where they are.

Our NEP staff - Chris Serio-Chapman, Derrick Hunt and Lamont Clark.

At 10 a.m. this morning, I witnessed a part of life that many of us shy away from.  I spent time observing the work Health Department staff do within our harm reduction program.  Within the confines of a small camper on a street corner in Southwest Baltimore, two staff members attended to drug injecting users exchanging dirty needles for clean ones.  There was a steady stream of clients – men, women, young, old, black and white.  Some were regulars who chatted for a bit and then went about their day, while others were in and out in less than five minutes.

 

One of the clients, a woman just a year older than me, shared she had ongoing liver disease, diabetes and MRSA.  She also shared symptoms that made us suspect her diabetes was not under control and we convinced her to follow up with her clinic.  Another young lady listed a bunch of STI’s she had been treated for and was concerned she might have HIV.  We were testing her for HIV on the spot.

Our Needle Exchange Program (NEP) is the cornerstone of BCHD’s Ha­­­rm Reduction Program. NEP is an evidenced-based intervention program that provides clean needles to injection drug users in return for used syringes, which are discarded. The purpose of the program is to reduce the frequency of infections passed through the use of unclean needles, infections that include HIV and hepatitis C. 

The time I spent on the van gave me a more personal glimpse of the ravages of drug abuse in our city.  Our program, run by Chris Serio-Chapman and her staff, is the only confidential needle exchange program in the country.  The success of the program has been documented: when the program began in 1994, it is estimated that approximately 650 incident cases of HIV in Baltimore were caused by injection drug use, representing 60.3% of reported HIV.  Sixteen years later, the number of new HIV infections caused by injection drug use dropped to 177 new cases per year, representing a 29.5% decrease in the proportion of new HIV diagnoses caused by injection drug use.

One of the many reasons we’ve been successful is the attention paid to doing things that are evidence-based and evaluating the work we do to make sure we’re getting the outcomes that will best improve the lives of the people we serve.  An even more important reason is the dedicated staff that we have.  In addition to Chris, I got to talk with Derrick Hunt and Lamont Clark about their experience with the program and how we could help people on the road to recovery. 

I also had the pleasure of observing the skill with which they were able to engage individual clients by meeting them where they were. NEP has been extremely successful in this regard, currently operating at 17 locations around the city. Since 1994, more than 9 million clean syringes have been distributed to clients, and more than 10 million contaminated needles have been properly destroyed since it was started.

For more information about Baltimore’s needle exchange program, including our location sites and times, please see our website. For the latest NEP updates, be sure to “like” their Facebook page.

Take Care, Baltimore.