Host interview with Dr. John Rich

Listen to the full audio story

Download the MP3

Through Dr. Richs work at a Boston City Hospital during a violent period in the 1990s, he began noticing a disproportionate amount of young Black men showing up on hospital beds. At first, he and many of his colleagues felt that the men must have been criminals in order to end up in the emergency room, but after some in-depth interviews, Rich discovered that many of these victims of violence were just that, victims. Now, as a professor and Chair of Department of Health Management and Policy at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he has a program to aid people suffering from the physical and emotional wounds of violence. His book, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men, compiles the stories of the men he talked to about their experiences.