Students at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore trained to Stop the Bleed
Sydney Brewer, a junior at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, practices applying a tourniquet on Catherine Dunckley from Northwell Health on Friday. Credit: Howard Schnapp
John F. Kennedy High School students in several gym classes Friday turned their attention to learning how to apply tourniquets to stop bleeding in the case of a school shooting or other life-threatening emergency.
By the end of next week, Northwell Health medical professionals will teach roughly 1,000 students at the Bellmore school lifesaving techniques as part of Stop the Bleed, a national grassroots campaign encouraging people to get training to help a bleeding person in the critical moments before health care workers arrive on the scene, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Although the training seeks to inform, the event is also a grim reminder of the all-too-common reality of mass shootings and how it has shaped education, school officials and students say. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence incidents, showed more than 200 mass shootings thus far in 2023.
Junior Sydney Brewer, who raised more than $3,000 to bring lifesaving medical kits to classrooms, said the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 first-graders and six educators inspired her to lead the effort to bring the training to her high school.
Brewer, 17, was the same age as some of the child victims when the shooting happened, and felt moved toward action while in her leadership class.
“So, I had to do something in their honor,” she said, adding, “We need to take all possible precautions to help save as many lives as we possibly can.”
And on Friday, that need to do something came into focus. In the gym and cafeteria, students practiced packing wounds with gauze. They placed tourniquets on each other’s upper arms and were told in the event of a real emergency they would have to keep making it tighter until the blood stopped.
Dozens of medical kits that include a tourniquet, gauze to help stop bleeding and gloves are now in the high school’s classrooms.
The medical kits and the training, experts say, can save lives. Even with relatively fast 911 response time in Nassau County, paramedics might still not be able to save a person who has an untreated major injury, said Dr. Matthew Bank, a trauma director at Northwell Health who took part in Friday’s session.
The training, he said, can save a life and help to stave off a bystander’s anxiousness when they see large amounts of blood in the event of a shooting or even a bad cut. The training has been rolled out to students from other schools as well as to government officials, lifeguards and others, he said.
Still, Bank understands the grim nature of the work but emphasizes its importance.
“The only thing worse than a death is a death that could have been avoided,” he said.
When Principal Gerard Owenburg first learned of the desire among students to have the training on campus, he was taken aback.
School officials, he said, are usually the ones thinking about campus safety and training staff in emergencies. Now, Owenburg said, he was proud the students are taking an active role in those considerations.
But he noted, “I wish they didn't have to think about these things.”
Sophomore Gabriella Elliott said the training made her feel more comfortable.
“Going into this, I did not know really what a tourniquet was,” said Elliott, 15. “But now I can say that I comfortably know how to use it and I know how to pack a wound now.”
“That's pretty impressive,” she said.
Education: Howard University
Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.
Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation; New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting; Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.
