How LCMC Health works to reduce gun violence in New Orleans

More than two years ago, LCMC Health launched a program to help reduce gun violence in New Orleans.

A team at University Medical Center New Orleans works with victims of gun violence in Orleans Parish. The team offers support to victims and also works to prevent other shootings as well. LCMC Health launched the program with support from external funding from the city of New Orleans.

Since its inception, the system is helping some patients get out of the cycle of violence and has helped avert more tragedies, says Dr. Annelies De Wulf, an emergency room physician and director of violence intervention services at University Medical Center New Orleans.

“The most encouraging thing is when we prevent shootings,” De Wulf tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “We keep track of the number of times that people tell us that they are intending to retaliate or shoot somebody, and the times that we're able to to reduce that.”

In June, the team of “violence interrupters” helped avert four threats. “That was a good month, in that we're able to stop people from getting shot,” she says.

De Wulf says she’s also heartened by the opportunity to help victims find a way to live a better life.

“We know people who are survivors of gun violence are at quite high risk for future injury and death,” she says. “And so, when we're able to intervene in this very short moment in people's lives, and people can engage and hear and think and process and really consider what is meaningful to them, and then follow up in the clinic, those are really meaningful moments.”

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Preventing retaliation

The team at UMC New Orleans will work with victims of gun violence and their families.

“As soon as they're medically stable, our violence interrupters will engage with the survivor and offer emotional support, start engaging in safety planning and work on introducing this long-term program,” De Wulf says. “If the individual is not medically stable, then our violence interrupters will engage with the family.”

The violence intervention team members also accompany doctors when notifications are made about critical injuries of if a patient has unfortunately died. She says it’s important for team members to be present at those moments.

“They're there when people are thinking about retaliation,” De Wulf says. “We know a lot of times when people are shot, the shooter is known to the family members, and so really having our team be there in that front end is an important way to reduce further cycles of violence.”

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Supporting survivors

For survivors who are recovering in the hospital, De Wulf says the team works with them to envision life differently.

“Our team engages with them every day as or as much as they want, as much as the patient wants, and they continue to support them,” De Wulf says. “They kind of think through what's next. What do you want your life to look like? What are the things that are important to you, and how do we support you on that journey?”

“And we bring our violence intervention specialists. They're housed in the trauma recovery center. That's a trauma-focused mental health clinic. They're housed there, and they can come to the bedside, they make introductions, and after the person is discharged, work long-term with that person,” De Wulf says.

The team works to help survivors think about their strengths, things that are meaningful to them, and design a life plan.

“That means achieving short-term goals, medium-term goals, and long-term goals, not telling you what your goals are, but giving you the space to make those decisions,” De Wulf says.

“And our belief is, and we see this, that when people have choices, they choose a future that is stable and safe,” she says.

Building the team

De Wulf says the violence intervention staff deserve the credit for getting patients to buy into the program.

“We have hired members of the community who are incredibly talented at connecting with people and who have familiarity with the issues faced by survivors of gun violence through their own lived experiences,” she says. “So they're able to come to the bedside early on, really as soon as they're medically stable after a shooting, to be able to engage and offer emotional support, think through safety planning, and think through how we, as a program, can support them.”

The team requires a specific skill set to connect with survivors and families, De Wulf says.

Critically, she says team members need to be able to relate to victims and their loved ones.

“What we need is for people to be empathetic and for people to be able to relate and to kind of put their heart and soul into it,” De Wulf says.

“That means it's not like every other job,” she continues. “That means you need to be passionate about stopping gun violence specifically, and so people come into this with lived experience of having lost loved ones, having sustained injuries. They need to have the passion for it; otherwise, it's a tough tough connection.”

The violence intervention team builds trust with the families, and has helped ease tensions between family members and physicians.

“Being able to have these extra people on the team who can work with the medical team and work almost as a liaison has been incredible for reducing some of the hostility that can sometimes happen between medical teams and patients and their families …. it's been interesting to see that develop more so than I had expected,” De Wulf says.

Making progress

New Orleans has made some headway in curbing gun violence. Violent crime fell in 2025 for the third consecutive year, city officials said. New Orleans is on pace to have the lowest number of homicides since 1969, officials say.

De Wulf says a host of community programs are working together to reduce gun violence in the city. LCMC is working with the health department and community partners to curb violence and the social drivers that can cause gun violence to happen.

In 2022, the peak of violence in the city, UMC New Orleans was seeing about 1,000 gunshot wounds per year, De Wulf says.

Now, the number of gun violence victims has dropped in half, she says.

“We're closer to 500, which is great,” De Wulf says. “But that's still, on average, more than one gunshot wound per year per day. So we see a lot of gun violence.”

“That's the reason for doing this. You know, being in the emergency department as a healthcare provider, and seeing countless people come through with their lives disrupted, we really wanted to step in and make some changes to that,” De Wulf says.