Enhancement of Hospital-Based Victim Services Through the Addition of Dedicated Mental Health and Case Management Support

Temple University Hospital (TUH), with Central Division Victim Services, Concilio, Congreso, and Northwest Victim Services will advance OVC’s goal to expand access to evidence-driven and trauma-informed hospital-based services for crime victims to better mitigate the social, emotional, and psychological impact of community violence and increase wellness and self-sufficiency to avoid future violence.  Over two years, the Trauma Victim Supports Advocate (TVSA) program will serve 425 Philadelphians who are experiencing historic rates of gun violence and are marginalized by persistent poverty and poor coordination among traditional service infrastructures. TUH is uniquely qualified to deliver TVSA, situated in the heart of the neighborhoods most affected by gun violence and building from a pilot funded through VOCA that brought together the partners and resources to establish the program. OVC dollars will improve and enhance that pilot through the addition of a case manager to provide essential follow-up with victims and on-site clinical mental health services, including for mono-lingual Spanish speaking victims for whom there are almost no available mental health resources now. TVSA will: 1) Improve hospital-based responses to crime victims to better mitigate the social, emotional, and psychological impact of community violence, 2) Improve collaboration between the hospital and community-based victim service agencies, while improving coordination among departments treating victims within TUH, and 3) Utilize victim perspectives, programmatic and service network data to document, monitor and improve service delivery and patient outcomes. The Genoa Group, an independent, local research partner with extensive violence prevention evaluation experience will evaluate TVSA using a quasi-experimental single case study design with propensity score matching to compare revictimization and injury outcomes. The evaluation sample will include three groups: 1) patients participating in the pilot version of the program; 2) patients receiving services through the enhanced demonstration program; and 3) patients who were eligible for the enhanced demonstration program but were not enrolled.  A network analysis will examine service partner collaboration and coordination from the victim’s perspective. Project results will increase the body of evidence to understand hospital-based approaches that provide culturally-relevant, trauma-informed services that improve the well-being and self-sufficiency of gun violence victims to avoid future violence, while providing critical information on how service network collaboration can support or impede these outcomes. The project will engage city leaders and service partners to disseminate project results and produce an implementation manual that will support program fidelity and be available as a replication guide for other hospitals and communities.