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Volum eXLIII
‘City <?/Roses’
Number 50
k jf g¡¡¡J www.portlandobserver.com
BUB I b 3 Wednesday • December 25, 2013
Established in 1970
Com m itted to C ultural D iversity
Oj
community service
P hoto by D onovan M. S mith /T he P ortland O bserver
Dr. Alicia Moreland-Capuia (from left) and members other ‘Healing Hurt People’ team, Josh Lathan and Cheryl A. Johnson, oversee the new violence prevention
program that helps young people, especially men of color, heal from traumatic injuries and make future adjustments to their lives to help end a cycle of recurring
violence and retribution.
Healing
Trauma-informed program
assists males of color
Hurt People
D r . D onovan M. S mith
T he P ortland O bserver
by
How do you heal hurt people? Dr. Alicia Moreland-Capuia
would like to think she has an answer for young men of color
who have been scarred by traumatic injuries and need help
to escape a life of recurring violence and retribution.
A licensed and board-certified psychiatrist who is com ­
pleting a fellowship in addiction medicine at OHSU, Moreland-
Capuia has implemented “Healing Hurt People Portland” a
program to heal young people who have suffered serious
physical injuries from guns and knives.
The undertaking comes in a partnership between Cascadia
Health Services and Legacy Emanuel Hospital to help young
patients of color break a cycle of violence with an interdiction
team that includes a social worker, doctor and other support.
Capuia, 32, an African American who graduated from
Jefferson High School, says the saw the need to bring more
diversity into the medical field early in her life when she became
cognizant of the lack of familiar faces in the health professions.
“We had a lot of people in my family who were ill, w e’d go
to hospitals here in the Portland area and there just weren’t
a lot of people that looked like us that were taking care of my
family,” she says.
Her realization manifested itself in later years when she
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