By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — UW Health SwedishAmerican Hospital is preparing to add specially trained staff to its emergency department to offer support and assistance to patients whose injuries stem from suspected domestic violence.
The additional ER resources are the result of a partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Domestic and Community Violence Prevention and approximately $1 million in funding from the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
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The funds also support a task force that’s called to work on domestic violence prevention education and awareness in the community.
“This initiative and this collaboration is about addressing and tackling the important issue in real time, but it’s also about working to prevent it from happening again and ultimately aiming to reduce this in our community over time,” said Travis Andersen, president and CEO of UW Health Northern Illinois. “It’s not just personnel, it is education beyond the spectrum of what happens in our institution.”
The partnership was announced Wednesday during a news conference at City Hall.
There will be three full-time employees hired for the pilot initiative. Two are intended to be medical professionals with expertise on non-fatal strangulation, something law enforcement and advocates for domestic violence survivors say shows an increased likelihood for future homicide. The third is a program manager to oversee operations and coordinate education, including work through the task force to develop broader training for the hospital.
“We have non-fatal strangulation experts in our community right now who have been through this training,” said Jennifer Cacciapaglia, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Domestic and Community Violence. “We don’t have any who are embedded in an ER.”
Cacciapaglia said more than half of survivors who seek help at the Family Peace Center have been choked or strangled. Domestic violence, meanwhile, accounted for roughly 44% of all violent crime in the city last year and it makes up about 50% of violent crime so far this year, Cacciapaglia said.
“The sooner we identify those who have experienced domestic violence, the sooner we can help,” she said. “Thanks to this new partnership, we will have more experts on site to focus on providing that support and more resources to offer community members who need it.”
Non-fatal strangulation, which includes choking or otherwise impairing someone’s breathing, has been show to increase a survivor’s risk of being the victim of homicide in the future by 700%, Cacciapaglia said, citing studies from the Alliance for Hope International.
“When someone is strangling someone they are practicing killing them,” Mayor Tom McNamara said.
Educating survivors on that has been an important part of protecting them. Cacciapaglia said the Family Peace Center saw a 20% increase in survivors willing to go to the hospital after strangulation or choking in the past two years. That allows hospitals to document injuries that may not always show up on the outside of the body. That documentation can be used by prosecutors, potentially bringing abusers to justice even if a victim decides not to testify — a common issue for prosecutors in domestic violence cases.
“This lays another piece of evidence because it creates medical documentation,” Cacciapaglia said. “Collaborating with that survivor — with his, her, their complete consent — we can have those medical records that will speak for themselves. That is incredibly impactful for juries.”
There is no specific date for when the new resources will be added to the ER. The task force, which includes UW Health, the Mayor’s Office of Domestic and Community Violence, and other stakeholders, began meeting earlier this month.
“By bringing the community to the patient with this partnership in the emergency department, survivors can access services, reduce seeing the chance of further violence and getting them on the path to justice,” said state Sen. Steve Stadelman, who secured the grant for the initiative.
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas