Hospitals Lead a National Day of Awareness to End Violence

America’s hospitals and health systems experience firsthand the devastating impact all forms of violence have on individuals’ lives and health. And they see how violence can ripple through a community, affecting not just the injured but their family, friends and neighbors.

As beacons of healing, comfort, care and hope, hospitals and health systems are collaborating with community partners to address this important issue.

The AHA’s Hospitals Against Violence initiative shines a light on how hospitals and health systems are working to heal victims of violence as well as their communities, prevent further acts of violence, and address violence in the workplace. The AHA, working with partner organizations, has developed and shared many resources for hospitals to use to address community and workplace violence.

Today, for the ninth consecutive year, AHA is leading #HAVhope Friday — a National Day of Awareness to end violence. #HAVhope unites hospitals, health systems, nurses, doctors, health care professionals and individuals from communities across the country in sharing their commitment to ending violence and highlighting impactful innovative strategies and partnerships. Please take a few minutes to view our #HAVhope webpage  to see many inspiring examples from hospitals and health systems across the country.

We know the enormous human and emotional toll violence takes on caregivers and communities. At the same time, a new report  we released this week found that workplace and community violence cost hospitals more than $18 billion in 2023. The report, which was prepared for the AHA by Harborview Injury and Prevention Research Center, part of the University of Washington School of Medicine, found that costs included health care treatment for victims, security staffing for health care facilities, and violence prevention programs and training, among other costs.

Hospitals and health systems have long had robust protocols to detect, deter and respond to violence against their team members. These include hospital security and threat assessment teams collaborating with local police departments and other community partners on violence mitigation tactics such as de-escalation training, staff duress alarms, enhanced surveillance security technology and more effective visitor identification policies, among many other measures. Other hospitals are seeking to decrease incidents of workplace violence by upgrading their incident reporting system, boosting prevention education and meticulously tracking data to help prevent future incidents.

Despite these efforts, during the past decade the health care field has experienced an increase in workplace violence, and it is showing no signs of subsiding. In addition to causing physical and psychological injury for health care workers, these incidents make it more difficult for nurses, physicians and other team members to provide quality patient care.

Currently, no federal law protects hospital workers from workplace assault. That’s why the AHA is advocating for the enactment of the Save Healthcare Workers Act,  (H.R. 3178/S. 1600) bipartisan, bicameral legislation introduced last month that would make it a federal crime to assault hospital workers, similar to current federal law protecting airline and airport workers.

Violence has no place in our communities or in health care settings. We must keep working together to end the cycle of violence and ensure that our nation’s caregivers can focus on what they do best — caring for patients and advancing health in our communities.