Aim4Peace has saved hundreds of lives, trauma surgeon says. But it needs city funding

Over the past 27 years as a trauma surgeon, Michael Moncure has seen the same scenario play out: A shooting victim comes in and while doctors work to save their life, their anguished family members seek retribution.

“They’re angry and during this emotionally charged situation, they feel like that’s the only thing they can contribute or do,” said Moncure, who works at Truman Medical Center.

That’s when staff from Aim4Peace — a violence interruption program — step in. Their social workers are called to two Kansas City hospital systems after gun violence to intervene with the families in moments of crisis. They also work with victims throughout the recovery process, helping them get connected to resources.

A study Moncure worked on found that before Aim4Peace, gunshot victims treated at Truman were returning at rates of 40% to 50%. That dropped to about 10% once they interacted with the program.

But the program’s future is uncertain as funding from the city in recent years has faced cuts and a major federal grant for the hospital initiative ended in September.

Moncure said he has seen the impact Aim4Peace has had on his patients and their families.

“They oftentimes know the family members and they know an array of individuals in the community so that they can also act as a resource, calling the uncle or pulling the kids aside so that nothing [retaliatory] happens,” he said.

The hospital response team members have acted as liaisons between medical staff and victims, even flagging doctors if a patient is not doing well during their recovery.

It’s the first time Moncure has worked in a hospital that included a violence prevention response team like Aim4Peace, he said, but it’s not the first time he has wanted one. He was part of an effort to start a similar program at the University of Kansas Health System, but his team was not able to establish a partnership with an organization like Aim4Peace.

Now, Moncure said he sees that when Aim4Peace works with his patients, those who may have returned to high-risk behavior that led to gunshot injuries will take a step back and assess their lives.

“If you’re sitting there with your arm in a sling and you’ve got an operation, you’ve got a rod in your leg ... that’s the time when you have time to kind of reflect and say, ‘This is not what I want,’” he said.

According to Moncure, Aim4Peace’s hospital program is highly regarded in national medical communities.

“It’s evidence-based,” Moncure said. “And people throw that term around way too much, but there’s not very much [else] out there, I can tell you.”

When an ordinance was proposed in 2020 to reallocate city funding away from Aim4Peace, Moncure wrote a letter in opposition.

If the program went away as a resource from his intensive care unit, he would notice the difference, Moncure said

“Hundreds of individuals have been saved by virtue of having Aim4Peace,” he said.

“I’ve seen people that I’ve treated in New Jersey and Kansas City, Kansas — I see them come in with gunshot [injuries] and then I see them a month later dead,” he said. “I hardly ever see that here.”

Hurubie Meko

The Kansas City Star

(913) 213-3729

Hurubie Meko covers gun violence for The Star as a 2021 Report for America corps member. She is an American University School of Communications graduate and was previously a data and visualizations reporter in Pennsylvania.