The Trauma Center Campaign was a grassroots direct action campaign that induced the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) to open an adult, level-1 trauma center. The campaign was organized by the Trauma Care Coalition, a coalition of community and student organizations founded in 2010 by the Black youth community organization Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) and its parent organization, Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP).
In December 2015, after years of protests that attracted national media attention, UCMC met the campaign's demand by announcing plans to establish an adult trauma center. The trauma center opened in 2018. This reduced the significant racial disparity in access to trauma care in Chicago, which previously had no adult, level-1 trauma center on its predominately Black South Side.
The Trauma Center Campaign was part of an upsurge of racial justice activism across the United States in the 2010s that coincided with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Trauma center activists employed Black Lives Matter rhetoric and maintained connections to other racial justice struggles in Chicago, such as protests around the murder of Laquan McDonald and the #ByeAnita campaign to prevent the re-election of Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez.
Background
The University of Chicago Medical Center closed its adult trauma center in 1988 for financial reasons, though it continued to operate a pediatric trauma center. The next year, Michael Reese Hospital also closed its trauma center, citing financial strain caused in part by the loss of UCMC's trauma center. As a result, ambulance transport times from the Southeast Side of Chicago to a trauma center were found in 2011 to be 50% longer on average than those from other parts of Chicago. A 2013 study from Northwestern University found that those longer transport times were resulting in higher mortality rates and called the South Side of Chicago a "trauma desert".
On August 15, 2010, 18-year-old Damian Turner was critically injured in a drive-by shooting near the intersection of 61st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, roughly four blocks away from UCMC. Turner was a community organizer who had co-founded FLY and helped to lead a campaign by FLY to improve conditions at the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center. Since UCMC did not have an adult trauma center, he was transported over nine miles by ambulance to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he died. His death brought renewed attention to the lack of trauma care on Chicago's South Side and spurred FLY and STOP to found the Trauma Care Coalition. Other members of the coalition included the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, Students for Health Equity (a group of University of Chicago students), the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, National Nurses United (the labor union representing UCMC nurses), and local churches and religious leaders.
FLY argued that the lack of a South Side trauma center was an instance of structural racism, pointing out that even though gun violence disproportionately impacts Black communities, the predominately white North Side of Chicago had far better access to trauma care than the predominately Black South Side.
Campaign timeline
FLY began organizing protests to demand a trauma center in late 2010. The first year of the campaign saw multiple demonstrations and panel discussions on the issue at the University of Chicago. UCMC administrators maintained that opening a trauma center was prohibitively expensive and would negatively impact the medical center's other services. Trauma centers typically operate at a financial loss because trauma patients tend to be poor and uninsured.
In May 2012, trauma center activists drew attention to the lack of trauma care on the South Side by marching 10 miles from the site where Damian Turner was shot to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was treated.
In January 2013, the Trauma Center Coalition staged a sit-in at UCMC's recently completed (but not yet opened) Center for Care and Discovery. The University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) responded by shoving participants to the ground and arresting four of them. Campaign activists described the police response as "very brutal" and accused the UCPD of racial bias in its treatment of protesters; a petition asking the University to explain the violence and drop the charges against the arrested received over 1,100 signatures. Days later, 200 people left flowers at the office of University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer as part of a "flower vigil" to commemorate victims of gun violence and continue to press for a trauma center at UCMC.