In 2021, Chicago launched a counterterrorism initiative to teach city employees to respond to life-threatening injuries caused by dangerous events, like mass shootings. To do that, the city installed more than 1,000 blood control kits in over 500 municipal buildings.
Since then, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications has grown the program by partnering with other agencies and departments. The expanded effort, community leaders say, serves a critical purpose: training bystanders to respond to everyday threats, like shootings, with the goal of bridging the gap between life-threatening injuries and ambulance arrivals.
As the city distributes more kits in neighborhoods where gun violence is common, nonprofit workers say officials are missing a key opportunity: installing the kits at violence prevention headquarters, where more people would be aware of their existence and more lives could be saved.
“A lot of these violence prevention organizations are pillars in their community,” said Trevon Bosley, a member of Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere (BRAVE), a youth-led group based at St. Sabina Church in Auburn Gresham. “If we have these kits there, I think that could be incredibly effective in times of need.”
Since the Safe Chicago initiative’s launch, the kits have been used at least nine times, a city spokesperson said; at least one instance was in response to a shooting. In addition to the city program, some violence prevention organizations have sought out their own training. In 2019, a doctor volunteered to train BRAVE youth participants to use the kits. A member of the group later used the training to save someone’s life after a shooting.
In recent years, shootings in Chicago have gotten deadlier. Bleeding out after a critical injury is the leading preventable cause of death, according to a study on trauma-related hemorrhages. Immediate intervention from bystanders after someone suffers a gunshot wound could help improve survival rates, the study said.
The “Stop the Bleed” kits are designed to address “compressible injuries,” wounds to areas with large blood vessels, like limbs, where sufficient pressure can cause the bleeding to stop, said Dr. Kenji Inaba, a trauma surgeon who chairs the Stop the Bleed Committee for the American College of Surgeons Committee.
Kits include a tourniquet, a sterile wrap known as Emergency Trauma Dressing, gauze, nitrile gloves, trauma shears, a survival blanket, a permanent marker, and an instruction manual. After a kit is used in a city-owned building, the city will replace it; partner locations are responsible for their own replacement costs, about $60.
While information about the kits’ locations is available online, several violence prevention leaders said they didn’t know they existed until a Trace reporter asked about them. “If the kits are there but no one knows how to use it, or know if it’s there, it might as well not even be there,” Bosley said.
The program is still evolving, said Kaila Lariviere, manager of Emergency Management Services. Last year, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications donated kits to several churches and trained their leaders.
The department also partnered with the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety to train high school students and community members on how to “Stop the Bleed” in neighborhoods most affected by gun violence, said Garien Gatewood, deputy mayor of community safety. They’ve left kits at each training site; so far, all three of them have been high schools.
Training young people, Bosley said, is especially important. Last year, more than half of the city’s gun violence victims were under 30, and almost 18 percent were 19 or younger.
As “Stop the Bleed” works to expand its training, Bosley said that instructors need to avoid retraumatizing those who may have already lost friends or family to gun violence. During a February training at Johnson College Prep, a charter school in Englewood, facilitators invited a mental health advocate to speak to about 100 students before and after the workshop. The school also made the advocate available to help students who were agitated by the training.
“We want them to be able to save a life,” said Gatewood, who attended the training. “Unfortunately, some of our kids may be put in a place where they have to use these things.”
In addition to saving lives, some hope that “Stop the Bleed” training can also prevent violence. “Going through the training and actually visualizing someone being in that situation, and the stress that comes with it, can also be a deterrent for someone to pick up a gun,” Bosley said.
