When the shutdowns happened at the beginning of the pandemic, the first thing UCSF trauma surgeon, Dr. Rebecca Plevin, noticed was a drop in traffic accidents. Then, things changed.
"We, at first, saw stable levels of violent injury that then began climbing and have continued to increase in 2021," she told KCBS Radio's "As Prescribed."
"It's an increase overall in various types of violent injuries including shootings and stabbings as well as other types of assaults," she said.
Plevin is the Director of the hospital-based violence intervention program, San Francisco Wraparound Project, which works to break the cycle of violence.
"After a person is injured once, he or she is at a dramatically increased risk of being injured again," she said. "Within five years of a violent injury, a person has as much as a 30 to 40 percent risk of being injured a second time or third time."
One of the reasons Plevin believes violence has increased during the pandemic, is that COVID-19 disproportionately affected communities that were already at a high risk of violent injury.
"Violence is the leading cause of death for young African-American men and boys, and it is the second leading cause of death for young Latino men and boys in the United States."
She said violence should be treated as a public health issue, including addressing inequities in what is known as the social determinants of health.
"These are things like housing insecurity, educational opportunities or lack thereof, job opportunities or lack thereof, access to mental health care or health care itself. And not having these types of resources increases a person's risk of violence," Plevin explained.
At the San Francisco Wraparound Project, specialists work with victims of violence when they are admitted to the hospital.
"We're then able to provide intensive case management, and connect our patients to organizations both at the hospital and within the community to address those needs, with the ultimate goal of decreasing their risk of re-injury, as well as, really importantly, improving those social determinants of health," she said.
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