NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A Vanderbilt University Hospital trauma surgeon has started a middle school program to teach conflict resolution.
Dr. Manish Sethi told The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/15dls9c ) surgeons need to be proactive in helping prevent a steady stream of gun-wounded teenagers to emergency rooms.
"As a trauma surgeon, I'm on the back end of things," he said. "I just think we need to get on the front end of this.
"I had a teenager who got shot in both of her legs,"Sethi said. "We had to basically put rods in both of her femurs. This is not just something that happens occasionally. It is happening more and more."
The majority of teens brought the Vanderbilt - Nashville's Level 1 Trauma Center - are African-American.
An article published last month in the Journal of Emergency Medicine notes that two-thirds of the 1,268 gunshot assault victims treated at Vanderbilt University Medical Center over a six-year period were black. Sethi was a co-author of that article.
The program he started at Cameron College Prep Middle School in Nashville is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
It teaches strategies for resolving conflict without resorting to violence.
Sethi said he and his team examined 30 different teenage violence prevention programs across the country in developing the local program. They chose a curriculum called "Aggressors, Victims and Bystanders: Thinking and Acting To Prevent Violence."
The program lasts three months. Students take the same test before and after the program. Students who found violent reactions justified in the pre-course exam gave very different answers after being instructed about how to resolve conflicts.
The pilot program, in partnership with the Metro Nashville Public Schools, is being put on at Cameron, which is near the J.C. Napier public housing project. Sethi has applied for a grant to expand it to other schools.
Statistics show black people between the ages of 18 and 25 account for 47 percent of Vanderbilt's patients with gunshot wounds.
"This is crazy," Sethi said. "We should do something."