The University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine have launched a new youth violence prevention program, Dusk to Dawn or D2D, which will be the only hospital-based program of its kind in Omaha.
Each month, 12 to 15 at-risk youth will attend a 2 ½ hour class at the hospital.
Dr. Charity Evans, Assistant Professor in the UNMC Department of Surgery, and coordinator of the program, says the time participants spend in the Nebraska Medicine Trauma Bay may be quite impactful.
“Our goal would be to reach the kids that would benefit most from this, and some of those kids are going to be in detention centers, and in the courts. So, I think for them to actually be in that atmosphere, to feel how warm it is in the trauma bay, because we have to keep our patients warm, to see all of the machines, all of the equipment that it takes to try to save someone’s life, I think has an impact to say this is real.”
The Omaha Police Department, the Boys and Girls Club of the Midlands and the youth violence program YouTurn are collaborators on this program, which held its first class on April 26th. It is funded by a 3-year, $100,000 grant from UNMC.
For more information, see Nebraskamed.com