Emergency Preparedness in Urban Universities
Urban cities in the United States present increased risks for public safety with higher rates of traffic accidents, gun homicides, and mass shootings compared to suburban or rural areas. To educate citizens on how to help one another in emergencies, the American College of Surgeons developed Stop the Bleed (STB), a public health education program based on the premise that bystanders who are properly trained to treat traumatic bleed injuries have greater chance of preventing death rather than waiting for first responders.​
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This research project examines the uptake of STB by college students enrolled at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.
FEAR, EFFICACY, AND MOTIVATION
Download our Protection Motivation white paper that received NCA's 2025 Top Paper Award for the Applied Research Division
Situated in bustling, metropolitan centers, urban universities are responsible for meeting the demands of students, faculty, and staff. They must also stay attuned to the culture, needs, and issues of the larger cities they occupy. As such, students in urban universities may feel the pressures of public safety, not just as members of their campus community, but also as participants in surrounding city life.
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Guided by protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1975), results of this study indicated that immediately after taking STB, students experienced elevated fear of mass casualty events occurring on campus but also increased sense of self-efficacy and willingness to help victims with traumatic bleed injuries in the future. Ours is the first study to demonstrate that fear and efficacy act together to boost emergency preparedness bleed control learning outcomes among emerging adults.
​Today’s college-aged adults report a strong fear of gun violence, such as school shootings (Abrams, 2023) and are also less likely to engage with their surrounding communities (Seemiller & Grace, 2017). For many Generation Z students, the sense of community at school was further eroded by the COVID-19 pandemic when they pivoted to online classes. Given these contemporary trends, we examined whether participating in STB affected two key elements of students’ sense of school climate: (1) fear of crime on campus and (2) psychological sense of community.
Compared to initial baseline levels, results indicated a significant increase in the sense of community that students reported immediately after finishing the STB class. A repeated assessment conducted 3 months later revealed that their sense of community remained significantly greater than at baseline. Participating in STB seemed to strengthen a shared responsibility among students to contribute to and protect the wellbeing of others on campus.
EFFECTS OF BLEED CONTROL TRAINING ON STUDENTS' SENSE OF SCHOOL CLIMATE
