Photography courtesy of Stop the Bleed STL
Dr. LJ Punch teaches how to use a tourniquet.
Dr. LJ Punch remembers the stories: Teens who’ve watched their brothers, victims of violence, bleed to death in front of them, not knowing how to help. A mother who lost her 20-year-old son. His death, in terms of his injuries, was preventable.
In his role as a trauma surgeon, Punch saves lives; in his role as a community leader and co-founder of St. Louis’ Stop the Bleed program, he helps prevent people from ending up in the trauma center in the first place. And with his new Stop the Bleed Junior program, the Washington University associate professor is giving children as young as age 8 the opportunity to learn basic and trauma first aid.
Since March 2018, Punch’s program, based on a curriculum developed by the American College of Surgeons, has trained more than 6,000 people in trauma first aid: how to recognize and treat life-threatening bleeding. When Punch moved to St. Louis, four years ago, he recognized that Stop the Bleed, founded after the 2012 mass-casualty Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, could be valuable to people exposed to our city’s high level of gun violence. Some estimates, he says, express that as many as 20 percent of trauma deaths are preventable and that bleeding is the number-one preventable cause of those deaths.
“Training the public to stop bleeding is at least as beneficial as training the public to do CPR, and we certainly believe that’s valuable,” he says. He started working with community partners, then schools, then hospitals. Along the way, people brought their children to the training sessions. Punch was aware that he’d have to be careful not to traumatize them. “But what we found is, the kids hung with it,” he says. “Unfortunately, many of them had a story where they had seen someone hurt—not always due to violence—or they themselves had been hurt, and it was knowing what to do that was meaningful to them.”
Now Punch wants to expand the junior program to more schools. It’s timely; a wave of gun violence over the summer left 17 St. Louis children dead. Stop the Bleed’s teaching material was modified to be realistic but not overwhelming, Punch says, and children have the opportunity to make mini first aid kits. “It gets them thinking, ‘Oh, even if it’s just a little cut, I have the power to help myself. I’m not just a victim of what life does and brings to me.’ That messaging is something that we’re taking with us everywhere. When we have a bunch of little, little kids, we just do first aid, not trauma first aid... But if you’re 8 years or older and you’ve got an adult who’s OK with you doing it, we’ll train you.”
The class does more than just teach how to stanch bleeding. “Talking about trauma, in terms of physical trauma, is a powerful starting point for kids to talk about things they’ve seen, experiences they’ve had, and reflect on how it felt—it opens the door to a conversation that maybe otherwise it’s kind of hard to get to.”
Punch also says research so far shows that the class improves participants’ attitude about their ability to help: “I think—this is my philosophy—that if kids know how to help, they feel a greater value in their own lives, in the lives of others, and that’s a major step for reducing and even preventing violence.”
Cure Violence
One more way in which St. Louis is working to stop violent crime
In October, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed a $5 million appropriation to bring Cure Violence, an organization that views violence as a health issue and trains members of the community to intervene in situations that have the potential to turn violent, to the city. The organization also identifies community members at high risk for committing violence, working with them to understand the consequences and prevent retaliation. More than 25 cities across the U.S., including Kansas City, have implemented Cure Violence, and the program has expanded overseas. Punch says that the city’s adoption of the program is significant because it signals that violence is a public health issue, not just a matter of policing or criminal justice. But, he cautions: “I’m not saying that Cure Violence is in itself the cure. It is a road map; it is a way of thinking about the problem. It is an approach, which can be powerful and transformational, but it is not in and of itself the answer. It will only be as powerful as the very real people right here in St. Louis who do it.”
