Approximately 30 people from around the Washington, DC metro area gathered on April 23 at the Benning Neighborhood Library for the second community meeting of the Trauma Informed Washington DC Metro Area Initiative. The participants included trauma survivors, youth, representatives of youth-serving organizations, family members, social service providers including peer specialists, and local advocacy groups.

Veteran, peer specialist, and steering committee member Allen Sweatt provided an overview of the ACE Study and shared his own personal journey of healing from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and adult trauma. Trauma survivor and community organizer Leah Harris shared about our emerging understanding of ACEs, explaining that there is growing consensus around the need to broaden our understanding  of the traditional ACEs pyramid to include environmental stressors such as poverty, exposure to community violence and the impacts of structural violence of racism, discrimination, and historical trauma.

Harris provided an overview of the purpose of the initiative, and shared about the ACEs Connection Network and the Community Resilience Cookbook, and presented the group’s draft mission statement to the group:

This group explores issues related to adversity, trauma and resilience in the District of Columbia and surrounding areas. We are advocates, trauma survivors, concerned community members, and professionals who share information and develop practical solutions, to support the Washington, DC metro area to become trauma-informed, address sources of adversity, and promote health and well-being.

She also shared about the community organizing efforts. Harris has been using the Roadmap to Resilience materials provided by ACEs Connection and the Community Resilience Cookbook, which are informed by successes across the country. Currently there is an ongoing effort in to identify Washington DC area-organizations that are addressing trauma and to engage in outreach to individuals, sectors, and organizations not currently represented. Attendees were invited to assist in the outreach efforts and identification of key constituencies to involve.

Elizabeth Prewitt, policy analyst and community manager at ACEs Connection, described the strategy to use existing data to help inform the strategic priorities of the initiative. Data is an important part of this overall effort, as it will set a baseline against which to measure change and to gauge the impact of ACEs in the area. Prewitt explained that data on ACEs in the District of Columbia have been collected as a part of the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and the plan is to partner with a local researcher on compiling the existing data in a meaningful way. Kelly Taylor, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco attended the meeting and is working with ACEs Connection to pursue further analysis of the 2010 BRFSS ACEs module with the D.C. Department of Public Health. The next step would be to issue a report than can be used for outreach, fundraising, and educational purposes. Reports like this have been done in California, Alaska, and elsewhere.

Following the presentation there was an impassioned discussion among community members. One attendee said that information on trauma and toxic stress was greatly needed at her son’s high school. Other individuals expressed concern about poverty, lack of affordable housing, and police violence, and hoped that this initiative would be sure to address the community’s most critical needs. There was a sense of urgency in the room, and several people voiced a desire to see the initiative develop concrete strategies for action as soon as possible. Overall, there was great enthusiasm for the trauma-informed community organizing strategy and approach.

Our next meeting (date TBD in June) will be a screening of Wounded Places, a 40 minute chapter of the Raising of America: Early Childhood and the Future of Our Nation documentary which examines the effects of unrelenting structural racism, street violence, domestic instability and other adversities on children, especially children of color living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. The screening will be followed by a community meeting, facilitated with the Wounded Places discussion guide.

Please visit our Washington, DC Metro Area ACEs Connection page (registration is free of charge) in the coming weeks for more information on the Wounded Places screening and community meeting.