A congressional briefing on the Science of Trauma, organized by U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and U.S. Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA), will be held at 2:30 pm, Wednesday, May 25, 2016, in 562 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.  The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) is sponsoring the event. CTIPP is a new organization comprising individuals and groups from all sectors and walks of life working together to create a better future by promoting trauma-informed policy and practice.

The CTIPP leadership, including attorney Dan Press and long-time trauma-informed consultant Andrea Blanch, has been conducting conversations on Capitol Hill about the policy implications of the science of trauma for the last  two years. They are working closely with Heitkamp, who is very engaged in the topic, in large part because of her commitment to the Native American community in her state of North Dakota.

Heitkamp was the force behind a major Roundtable on Toxic Stress in Native American communities in late 2014, and most recently organized a letter from 12 U.S. senators to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell seeking comprehensive support to combat trauma in Native American children.

This briefing, along with two others in the planning stages to address trauma-informed practices and policy, is intended to expose congressional staff—some for the first time—to the science of trauma. It became evident to the founders of CTIPP that education about trauma should be a high priority when major bills relating to mental health, criminal justice reform, and education did not address trauma in significant ways. Exposure to this information in the U.S. Congress is growing as demonstrated by a recent hearing on mental health in the Senate Finance Committee where Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis devoted most of her oral testimony to the impact of adversity on health.

Speakers will include two CTIPP founding members: Elizabeth Prewitt, policy analyst for ACEs Connection Network, who will talk about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) and its implications; and Dr. Zack Kaminsky, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who will review epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Dr. Nathan Fox, director, University of Maryland Child Development Lab, will address the impact of trauma on the brain and mind/body. Dr. Wendy Ellis, manager of child health policy, Office of Child Health Policy & Advocacy at Nemours Children’s Health System, will moderate the program.

Because the hearing room is large, representatives of interested organizations and other stakeholders are welcome to attend.  Plans are being made to videotape the event.

The agenda for the hour-long briefing was circulated widely and included the following introduction to the topic:

The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study measures exposure to trauma and toxic stress in childhood. People who have experienced four or more ACEs—such as experiencing emotional, physical or sexual abuse, or exposure to divorce, living with a family member who's an alcoholic or has a mental illness—have double the lifetime risk of heart disease and cancer. Those exposed to six or more ACEs have a 20-year reduction in life expectancy. Those exposed to more than six have a 30-fold increase in attempted suicide.

This briefing will present the basic science of toxic stress, trauma and resilience, including impact on the developing brain, effects across the lifespan, and mechanisms of inter-generational transmission.