Recovery Legal Care Randomized Trial

National trauma center verification relies on a commitment to injury prevention efforts,including prevention of community‐level violence. Hospital‐Based Violence RecoveryPrograms (HVIPs) have expanded across the country as extensions of Level I and II traumacenters to address trauma recidivism with individual behavioral modification during the"teachable moment". There is no evidence to date that has demonstrated effectiveness inthis approach for HVIPs, despite proliferation across the country. A criticism of thisapproach to violence prevention is the difficulty for community‐based violence preventionspecialists from HVIP programs to address the broader social and economic risk factorsthat lead to violence through individual behavior modification. Medical‐LegalPartnerships (MLPs) have been one approach that has demonstrated evidence and success inimproving health outcomes and reducing health‐harming legal needs of patients byconnecting legal experts to medical experts for holistic care. The MLP approach has yetto be done for trauma patients and has not been incorporated into any HVIP approach thusfar. In the study's biphasic proposal, the UG3 aims are to clearly identify the types ofhealth‐harming legal needs of patients and families affected by firearm violence andexamine the population‐level differences in types of legal needs by sociodemographic andgeographic factors. The investigators then aim to develop the HVIP‐MLP model forimplementation at an urban, Level I Trauma Center on the South Side of Chicago. The UH3aims are to examine implementation outcomes (acceptability and feasibility) of this novelMLP compared to standard of care with HVIP; and examine health outcomes via a clinicaltrial measuring primary health outcome (perceived stress) and secondary outcomes(improvements in legal need self‐efficacy, PTSD symptoms, and firearm aggression andvictimization). Close coordination with the CFVP Coordinating Center will be essentialfor data handling, measurement, analytics support and consultation with futurepublic/stakeholder engagement and dissemination to demonstrate public health impact. Thisnovel HVIP‐MLP approach has the potential to broadly impact the HVIP model to include anMLP component to all trauma centers for verification to support patients, families andproviders alike in this important public health work.