Today’s severe weather has forced rescheduling of a Sexual Assault Awareness Month event at UnityPoint Health, 2701 17th Street, Rock Island.
The event will now be Friday April 7, 2023, at 10 a.m., when UnityPoint Health Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) and community volunteers will place 112 flags on the lawn of the Rock Island hospital campus and 22 flags at the Bettendorf Trinity hospital to honor survivors of sexual assault. Each flag represents a survivor that sought help and received treatment at UnityPoint Health in 2022, according to a UnityPoint release Tuesday.
Sexual assault affects more than 463,000 people in the United States every year. Even more alarming is that every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted and it can happen to both women and men, the release said. For survivors, sexual assault can have long-term psychological, emotional and physical effects.
UnityPoint Health has specially-trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) to help sexual
assault survivors through trauma-informed care practices. UnityPoint Health – Trinity is the only hospital with SANE nurses on staff to care and treat sexual assault patients in the Illinois Quad Cities and support survivors from communities up to 50 miles away, according to the health system.
