The Donald D. Trunkey Center for Civilian and Combat Casualty Care has announced the winner of their second annual Research and Innovation Award. Kathleen Carlson, Ph.D., and her team received the $20,000 award for the proposal “Improving OHSU Trauma Patient Outcomes through Evaluation of Healing Hurt People-Portland: A Photovoice Pilot Project.” Dr. Carlson is a professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, leads the OHSU-PSU Gun Violence as a Public Health Issue Advisory Committee, and directs the newly formed OHSU Gun Violence Prevention Research Center. She also serves as a core investigator in the VA Portland Health Care System’s Health Services Research and Development Center of Innovation. Dr. Carlson has been conducting injury and violence prevention research since 2000. She is working with Healing Hurt People (HHP), a hospital-based violence intervention program currently offered at OHSU that treats youth through early adult patients of color who have been victims of shooting and stabbing assaults.

This pilot project is in collaboration with Roy Moore, director of HHP with the Portland Opportunity Industrialization Center; and Nicole Cerra, MPH, MA; Susan DeFrancesco, JD, MPH; Ayanna Bell, BS; Heather Wong, MHS, BSN, RN, TCRN; and Jody Berryhill, RN. It will use Photovoice, a community-based qualitative research methodology often used in public health, to illuminate the perspectives of HHP’s intensive case managers on conducting violence prevention work. This project will highlight potential program improvements for HHP, ultimately resulting in better care for trauma patients at OHSU and across Oregon—and addressing a gap in research about hospital-based violence intervention programs, a growing subfield of trauma research.