The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery has been awarded a $1,000 grant from the American Trauma Society for the Trauma Survivors Network (TSN) at UAB.

Allie Hulcher, the division’s communications specialist and TSN coordinator, submitted the application for this inaugural grant program. The grant will be used to continue the new peer mentoring program at UAB and to raise awareness for the TSN and the next Trauma Survivors Day event at UAB.

“Your work as a TSN site is integral to the mission of the American Trauma Society: ‘Saving Lives. Improving Care. Empowering Survivors,’” said National Trauma Survivors Network Coordinator Katherine Joseph, MPH.

UAB became a TSN site, joining over 150 other hospitals nationwide, in the fall of 2021. Since then, UAB’s TSN has trained two UAB trauma survivors, Daryl Coleman and Diane Eubank, as peer mentors. This fall, Coleman and Eubank began visiting trauma patients at the bedside to provide comfort and support and answer questions from their perspective as a fellow trauma survivor. In May of this year, the TSN held the first ever UAB Trauma Survivors Day event, during which five past UAB trauma patients and their families and medical care teams were honored. Coleman and Eubank spoke and shared their stories.