Helping to halt domestic violence and child abuse has been a key focus for the Carilion Clinic in Virginia, and there’s been one essential ingredient to those endeavors.
That’s according to Patrice Weiss, M.D., chief medical officer and executive vice president of the Roanoke-based hospital system, who spoke with the American Hospital Association’s Physician Leadership Forum for a new podcast. Child abuse, in particular, was identified as one of the top 10 priority needs in the organization’s recent community health needs assessment.
In the 18-minute Q&A, Weiss, who is also a member of the AHA’s committee on clinical leadership, discusses some of the strategies that Carilion is using to help stop violence in the home. Partnering with outside agencies such as the Southern Virginia Child Advocacy Center has proven crucial to the system’s efforts, she says.
“I couldn’t emphasize that enough. A hospital or a hospital system cannot do this on its own,” Weiss says. “It’s so important that there’s this true collaboration between the health system and the community,” she adds later.
Be sure to give the podcast a listen, and for more on how hospitals are combating violence in their communities, check out both H&HN's March cover story, which explores lessons learned from recent mass-casualty incidents in Dallas and Orlando, Fla., and the AHA’s Hospitals Against Violence resource page.
