AHW-Funded Project Creates Groundbreaking Student Trauma Response System in Milwaukee

Each day, dozens of potentially traumatic events occur throughout Milwaukee—shootings, fires, overdoses, domestic violence calls—that ripple through neighborhoods and into classrooms. Yet, until recently, there was no systematic way for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to know which of their 67,000 students might have witnessed or been affected by these incidents outside of school hours, creating a significant gap between community trauma and the school-based mental health support system designed to help children cope and recover.

This disconnect represented a critical challenge for addressing the mental health needs of students in one of Wisconsin's most complex urban environments. With $92,576 in funding from the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment (AHW), an innovative partnership between MPS, the Milwaukee Fire Department, the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), and California-based data analytics company FirstWatch developed what is believed to be the nation's first automated system for connecting emergency response data to student support services.

The project—led by MCW's David Cipriano, PhD (Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine) and community partners Joshua Parish, NRP, MSc, MPH, assistant chief of the Support Bureau for the Milwaukee Fire Department, and Travis Pinter, PhD, senior director of specialized services for MPS—brought together public safety agencies, school district personnel, and data analytics experts to create a systematic approach to trauma-informed care that can identify and support students who may have been exposed to potentially traumatic events in their neighborhoods.

Addressing the Communication Gap

The challenge of connecting community trauma to school-based mental health has existed for years, and Pinter, who handles crisis response for MPS, had long experienced the limitations of existing trauma-informed care protocols.

"Without a system in place, it was much more about the connections you had, the people you were able to reach on the phone, the sort of relationships you had built," Pinter explained. "What I was hoping was to get something much more systematic and much more consistent, and especially for things that occurred outside of school hours during weekends and summers."

Traditional approaches relied on individual phone calls and personal relationships between first responders and school personnel. While these connections sometimes worked well, they were inconsistent and missed many incidents. Even when emergency personnel recognized that children might be affected by traumatic events, there was no reliable mechanism for ensuring schools received this information.

Parish understood the magnitude of what they were attempting to create. His background in both emergency services and public health gave him perspective on the complexity of systematic change in large urban systems.

"The scope of what we were doing is just so off the charts… The concept literally did not exist,” Parish explained.

Building a Data-Driven Solution

The concept seemed straightforward—if Amazon.com can auto-complete addresses, databases must exist that standardize location data. However, executing this vision at scale in a city filled with unique addresses and multiple emergency response agencies proved far more complex than initially anticipated.

Parish began the work himself, experimenting with Excel spreadsheets to see if he could match emergency incident addresses with student home addresses from MPS records. The initial challenges were significant: different agencies use different GPS coordinate systems, apartment numbering varies widely across databases, and privacy protections for student data required careful navigation.

Dr. Cipriano brought valuable expertise to the partnership through his background in outcome research for school-based mental health organizations, including work with both Children's Wisconsin and School Community Partners for Mental Health. His established relationships with MPS and experience as an approved researcher made him an ideal collaborator for navigating the complex requirements of accessing student data while maintaining strict privacy protections. "This idea was all those two guys," Cipriano noted, referring to Parish and Pinter's innovative concept. "They came to me because they knew I was working in school-based mental health."

The team partnered with FirstWatch to transform Parish's proof-of-concept into a sophisticated system. FirstWatch engineers worked to merge multiple data sources: Milwaukee's computer-aided dispatch system, student roster information from MPS, and geographic mapping technology.

The resulting system can draw geographic circles around emergency incidents and identify all students living within specified distances. Importantly, the system can assign different proximity ranges to different types of incidents - a structure fire might warrant a larger radius than a medical call, reflecting the varying potential for trauma exposure depending on the nature and visibility of the emergency.

Screenshots of the complex data analysis and mapping system developed by FirstWatch to identify and track student exposure to community trauma incidents.

Rebekah Haywood, a FirstWatch analyst who worked on the project and brings experience as a former 911 dispatcher, explained how the system operates: "We have a trigger assessment tool that notifies Travis every time there's a matching incident. We've gone through all the different problems and incident types in the computer aided dispatch system and said, I want to know if there's a shooting within 20 feet of a student. I want to know if there's an assault within 20 feet of a student or an overdose, things like that."

Data-Driven Insights and Measurable Impact

One of the project's most valuable contributions was revealing the limitations of traditional approaches to resource allocation in large urban districts. When researchers analyzed the distribution of mental health staff across MPS schools and compared it with the frequency of traumatic incidents affecting students at each school, they discovered a lack of correlation between the two datasets.

This finding highlighted a fundamental challenge facing urban school districts: Without systematic data about community trauma exposure, even strategic resource allocation decisions were based on incomplete information. The project demonstrated how data-driven approaches could help districts better align support services with actual student needs.

The research validated the importance of this work through measurable academic and behavioral outcomes. Students who experienced one or more emergency response incidents scored significantly lower on standardized math tests and had lower attendance rates compared to students without such exposure. Importantly, schools with higher ratios of mental health support staff showed less decline in academic performance among trauma-exposed students, confirming the protective value of these resources when strategically deployed.

Real-World Applications

The system has already demonstrated its value through individual cases that illustrate its potential for early intervention. Pinter shared how the system helped during a fatal shooting involving two minors that occurred on a weekend. Beyond addressing the immediate tragedy, the system identified that multiple individuals in nearby houses had called 911 but hung up without identifying themselves.

"We suddenly said we better expand our check-ins to those neighboring houses and see if we can catch some of the students that were involved or maybe saw it," Pinter explained. "That's a new level of intervention potential that we've never had."

The system also tracks breathing-related incidents, allowing school nurses to follow up with students who may have had asthma attacks at home, ensuring they have their inhalers and understand proper usage. This broader application demonstrates how the technology can support both mental health and physical health needs.

Expanding beyond Milwaukee

What began as a Milwaukee-specific solution has attracted attention from urban districts nationwide. Pinter presented the project at a Council of Great City Schools conference, where representatives from other major metropolitan areas expressed interest in replicating the approach.

"I believe this might be the only program like this in the country," Pinter observed, noting that other major districts face identical challenges in connecting community trauma to school-based support services.

Todd Stout from FirstWatch emphasized the potential for national scaling: "There are big cities everywhere that have the same exact problem. How do we reach these kids, and how do we get a heads up that some stressful things have been happening, potentially traumatizing things that happened to them outside of school hours?"

Sustainable Operations and Future Vision

The AHW-funded pilot phase successfully proved the concept's viability and led to additional grant funding that now supports the full operational system. MPS has integrated the technology into their regular practice, with staff conducting what Pinter calls "cotton ball handoffs"—gentle check-ins with students who may have been exposed to traumatic events.

The project exemplifies AHW’s commitment to supporting innovative solutions that address complex health challenges in Wisconsin communities. This strategic investment helped transform an idea into a replicable model, demonstrating how targeted funding can spark innovations with impact extending far beyond their original scope.

Stout emphasized how essential AHW's funding was to the project's success, noting that many innovative ideas never get pursued without financial support to make them happen. Through initiatives like this trauma response system, AHW continues to support work that is improving health outcomes for Wisconsin's children while creating models that can benefit communities across the nation.