Trauma-informed care has emerged as a core competency to improve how health care organizations deliver services to people who have experienced adverse life events. Through the Advancing Trauma-Informed Care (ATC) initiative, and with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Center for Health Care Strategies convened innovators in the field to build on existing trauma-informed efforts and share lessons nationally. The Urban Institute conducted an implementation analysis to better understand how participating pilot sites adapted clinical and organizational practices to advance trauma-informed care. Following is a summary of key findings from the study, Early Adopters of Trauma-Informed Care: An Implementation Analysis of the Advancing Trauma-Informed Care Grantees.
Key Themes for Advancing Trauma-Informed Care
Interviews with staff and patients at ATC pilot sites revealed that successful trauma-informed organizations had key elements in common:
1. Prioritize organizational culture change.
ATC sites offer comprehensive training for staff on trauma and its impact on health and behavior to develop a common understanding around the concept. Some sites, like Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services (11th Street) in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and the Women’s HIV Program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF-WHP), are focused on robust organization-wide culture change. To achieve this, some are using existing frameworks like the Sanctuary Model to guide trauma-informed organizational change, while others have developed their own guiding principles.
[For more on this story by Meryl Schulman, MPH and Lisa Dubay, PhD and Rachel Burton, MPP, Urban Institute, go to https://www.chcs.org/what-does...f8bd247100-157177625]
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