08/09/2021

Council of Centers Spotlight: Stepping Strong Injury Prevention Program

Director: Molly Jarman, PhD, MPH

Year Organization/Center was founded: 2020

City/state where the Organization/Center is located: Boston, MA

What is something unique about your city?

Molasses once killed 21 people and injured 100 more when a storage tank holding millions of gallons of molasses burst causing the Great Molasses Flood in Boston in 1919. Boston is also home to the country’s first public beach (Revere Beach), first subway system, first chocolate factory, and first Dunkin Donuts.

What is/are the primary injury topics your organization/center addresses?

Older adult falls, violence-related injury (community violence, intimate partner violence, and suicide), traffic-related injury (motor vehicle crash injury, cyclist injury, pedestrian injury), substance use, and trauma-related outcomes (i.e. PTSD, depression/anxiety, return to work, quality of life)

Tell us about a fun office tradition held by your center?

We host quarterly Lunch & Learns, which consist of presentations from speakers outside of the hospital to our internal stakeholders about various injury prevention initiatives. The original goal of these is for stakeholders to participate and eat lunch while learning about injury prevention. However, we were only able to have one in March of 2020 right before the pandemic began where we were actually able to eat lunch all together. After that initial session, we have been conducting all Lunch & Learns over Zoom. We can’t wait to be able to meet in person for a real Lunch & Learn soon, hopefully in the next year!

How has your organization stayed connected during the pandemic?

We have stayed connected through Zoom. We do Zoom meetings quarterly with all of our stakeholders, as well as events. Half of our office is back in-person but we are continuing to do Zoom meetings. It can be funny when we all have the same Zoom meeting and we’re all Zooming from separate office rooms next door to each other. Other than that, we’ve definitely utilized technology for communications through social media, newsletters, and virtual email flyers to get the word out about important topics or events.

Anything else you would like to share with SAVIR members about your organization/center?

We are a brand new program and would love to hear from you! We are always looking for new partnerships or to learn from other centers about their development and path to being a leader in injury prevention. Feel free to contact us- Cheryl Lang at clang4@bwh.harvard.edu or Molly Jarman at mjarman@bwh.harvard.edu