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Trauma
Center
It
is only June, and already the city of Albany has seen its
fair share of shootings for the year. In May, the murder of
17-year-old Jovan Morton marked the fifth homicide of 2002.
Local neighborhoods were shaken once again last week (June
8) when another senseless murder took the life of 16-year-old
Ayvontasjaie Turner. The teen was shot six times on Third
Street after a dispute over a $35 dice game.
While
there are a number of programs in the city that work to prevent
such incidents from occurring, there are few that deal with
the traumatic effects that such criminal activities have on
a community’s psyche.
Lisa Good, program director at the Homer Perkins Center, and
Isla Roona, director of development for the Albany Restorative
Community Justice Center, are looking to change that. This
Monday (June 24), the two women will hold an informational
meeting to discuss the startup of a Trauma Response and Grief/Bereavement
Project for the city of Albany. (The meeting will take place
at 6:30 PM at the Arbor Hill Community Center.) The goal of
the program is to provide community members with an appropriate
way to grieve and cope with the feelings of fear, anger and
depression that are often the result of distressing and violent
situations.
“In
our communities, particularly the black communities, people
lose their family members to sudden violent acts or people
become injured or our young people are witnessing sudden violent
acts very frequently,” said Good. “And yet we don’t have the
resources with in our communities to give that emotional first
aid, or even recognize that this has happened and that it
devastates people’s lives.”
Teams will be trained in critical-incident stress management
and debriefing. They will go into a community after an incident
has occurred and work with people who are in need of emotional
support. The teams will consist of mental health professionals,
religious leaders, social workers and community peers.
“We
are trying to meet the needs of the community in a way that
is not necessarily involving any full-scale counseling or
professional intervention, although they could get referred
to those areas if they needed it,” said Roona. “People really
are not comfortable going for full assistance, especially
when they are in such pain. They really want something that
is provided by the community where they feel comfortable and
not in any way stigmatized by being affected by a traumatic
event.”
—N.G.
Testing,
Testing
A
collaboration of AIDS orga-nizations in the Capital Region
will host a Take the Test campaign from June 22-29. The weeklong
event will provide free HIV testing at a variety of locations,
including churches, bars and health centers. The theme of
this year’s event is “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You and
Me.”
For the last six years, the event has been promoted by a national
coalition of government agencies and nongovernmental organizations,
but this is the second year that local AIDS service organizations
are participating.
“Last
year we had over 200 people tested, which indicates to me
that we have a great need for testing and awareness,” said
Catherine Callan, director of public relations for the AIDS
Council of Northeastern New York. “We want people to get tested
so that we can detect the virus early and get them the services
and medical intervention needed in the beginning stages of
the disease.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
one million people in the United States are expected to be
HIV positive by the end of 2002; an estimated one-third of
those probably will not even know that they are infected.
New York state leads the country with the highest number of
reported cases, 80 percent of which are people of color.
“We
are out talking to people all the time about risk and prevention,
so we know there is still an incredible amount of ignorance
around HIV and AIDS,” said Blue Carreker, director of public
affairs and marketing for Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood.
“There is a lot of misconception, so we are trying to get
through that and encourage people to get tested, and try to
remove as many barriers as possible to people coming in and
getting tested.”
The week of testing kicks of this Saturday with a family-fun
day at Livingston Park in Albany. For a listing of test sites
and more information, call 471-9575.
—N.G.
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