Igniting community-based healing

Camden is starting a community effort, @CamdenHealing10, to bring together people across sectors (education, juvenile justice, etc) and also support community driven paths to address the decades long, intergenerational trauma experienced by the people of Camden and build a "community of communities". Camden is a small city of about 77,000 people, which allows close interaction and the opportunity to build relationships across sectors and across people within the community.

We began a multi-layered discussion in this group starting in March about Philadelphia "Children and Toxic Stress - the discussion continues" with many in this group contributing to a look at systems and sectors, and more than 300 reading the thread.

Philadelphia has 20 times the population of Camden or about 1.5 million, but much similar history, and is also a "city of neighborhoods". What does it take to ignite community-based healing? What are some of the examples of actions happening now that are bringing neighborhoods together and creating a trauma-informed environment?

5/5/148:06 PM

Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Gregory CaplanMember

As a former resident of Buffalo, New York (I spent 4 cold years as an undergraduate there) I can attest that the city closely resembles Philadelphia and Camden in many respects related to health and health outcomes. It is also a city of neighborhoods. Recently I noticed that the Buffalo-based Health Foundation of Western and Central New York (www.hfwcny.org) created a trauma informed community, Trauma-Informed Community Initiative of Western New York. This group is also affiliated with the University at Buffalo School of Social Work.

This group has been hosting "Grand Rounds" speaker series on a monthly basis. Last month the conversation was around military and their families, and this month is a panel of abuse survivors. Beyond that, they also convene town halls around behavioral health, law enforcement, health and education. It would appear that they have significant community involvement as well, as they listed all participating organizations at the last Grand Rounds.

For those interested in more information or their toolkit's, the website is www.wnytrauma.org.

5/14/141:26 PM

Leslie LiebermanMember

Hi Greg,

Thanks for sharing this inspiring information about Buffalo! I love that at the end of the flyer announcing the Grand Rounds you reference is the tag line:

Join us in making Western New York a Trauma-Informed Community.

We should follow suit in Philadelphia. How about

Join the movement to make Philadelphia a trauma-informed City

Add your suggestions and we'll conduct a poll and choose one we can all agree with.

5/15/142:57 PM