Aspirus St. Luke’s brings Stop the Bleed training to Duluth schools

Students and staff in Duluth schools are getting trained to respond when seconds matter. Aspirus St. Luke’s has begun rolling out Stop the Bleed sessions in schools across the city, giving people with little or no medical training hands-on practice in how to slow or stop life-threatening bleeding before emergency crews arrive.

The training is part of the American College of Surgeons’ national Stop the Bleed program, which teaches three basic bleeding-control actions for immediate responders. The college says bleeding is the number one cause of preventable death after injury, and by July 2025 more than 5 million people had been trained worldwide. The program now reaches all 50 states and at least 141 countries.

Aspirus says its trauma team offers Stop the Bleed group training to schools, businesses and other organizations in its communities. A typical session takes about an hour and combines lecture with hands-on skills, a format meant to make the techniques usable in real-world emergencies such as serious accidents or disasters. For Duluth schools, that means students and staff are not just hearing about emergency readiness, they are practicing the basic steps they would need if a severe cut, trauma injury or other bleeding emergency happened on campus.

The effort lands in a region where school safety has become a broader public health issue, not just a security one. Dakota County has already said it hoped to get Stop the Bleed training and kits into every school district by the end of 2025, signaling how quickly the idea is spreading across Minnesota. In St. Louis County, the Duluth rollout suggests a similar recognition that bystanders are often the first line of defense in the minutes before paramedics arrive.

Aspirus St. Luke’s completed its affiliation with Aspirus Health on March 1, 2024. At the time, the system said it operated 19 hospitals, 130 outpatient locations and nearly 14,000 team members. The Duluth training also fits a longer pattern for the health system: Aspirus St. Luke’s promoted Stop the Bleed locally in a May 20, 2020 release tied to Stop the Bleed Month and Stop the Bleed Day, showing the program has been part of its trauma-prevention work for years.

For parents and school communities, the practical takeaway is clear: the people most likely to be on scene first are being taught how to act, and Aspirus is using its trauma team to bring that skill directly into Duluth schools.