Healing the Wounds of Youth Violence: An Interview with Dr. Edward Cornwell III
By Derrell G. Owens
Dr. Edward Cornwell III is Chief of Adult Trauma at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Cornwell's schedule is extremely tight with long hours in the hospital, serving on various boards, lecturing and public speaking. However, he graciously takes time out to discuss an issue that is important to him: prevention of youth violence.
It only takes a few seconds of listening to Dr. Cornwell to discover his passionate views about youth violence and to witness his compassion. "The violence was in my face. Teenage gunshot victims is something we see all the time in the ER." Tragically, despite the best efforts of Cornwell and his team many gunshot victims are not able to be saved due to the extent of the injuries and many victims are dead on arrival. There are times when Cornwell and his team have "great saves", a term used to refer to victims with life threatening injuries, but recover due to the work of Cornwell and his team. "I want to shine a spotlight on the issue of youth violence. It is a real challenge to do it, but I feel compelled to do it. It's important to be involved in preventive programs."
In order to begin to work toward prevention Cornwell acknowledges that there needs to be a change in many areas such as poverty, culture, education and parenting. Cornwell also cites negative images as a contributing factor. "Unfortunately, our culture glamorizes violence. Music videos depict violence as being cool and hip. Kids look at these images and want to copy what they see." Cornwell has battled against these negative images by creating a video of his own. He helped found the Hopkins Injury Prevention and Community Outreach Collaboration, which brings the Hopkins Trauma unit, Hopkins graduate students and the Baltimore Police Athletic League together to work with city youth.
In the "Hype vs. Reality" video teens are confronted with the reality of gunshot victims vs. the cool "hype" that teens feed into. In the video Cornwell leads a group of teens through the ER and to patients rooms to give them a first hand look at the "reality" of gun violence and the severe damage that is caused by it. Though the video has been very successful in getting teens to rethink their ideas of youth violence Cornwell admits the struggle continues. "I am only one person. I can only do so much. It's hard to fight against the media when their audience is so much bigger than mine. Honestly, sometimes I do feel like giving up." However, Cornwell has not given up. He continues to speak out against youth violence. He continues to be proactive in his participation with preventive programs and he remains clinically active.
Cornwell is comfortable with being labeled a role model and understands the importance. He attributes his own successes to the many black role models he has. Though Cornwell has accomplishments too numerous to list he admits that he is not a seeker of recognition. "I am not a person who needs awards or recognitions. That's not what I'm after. I do what I do because it's needed. This is who I am."
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