Lincoln Alternative High School is in the small city of Walla Walla in southeastern Washington. It had been a place for students with disciplinary issues, those removed from the area’s other high schools, ordered there by a judge, or those who had performed poorly in middle school.

Tucked in the middle of a residential neighborhood, Lincoln’s brick edifice and cherry-red doors now serve as a place of opportunity for many students. At Lincoln, the first trauma-informed high school in the nation, the graduation rate increased by about 30 percent and suspensions decreased by almost 85 percent a year after implementing the framework. The school’s success, along with the advocacy efforts of relentless community leaders, convinced service providers throughout the city to adopt trauma-informed care in their own fields.

Today, an electric utility provider, the Division of Children and Family Services, the police department, and many others have all committed to raising awareness of traumatic childhood experiences and to providing internal resources to foster a safe and healthy community. As more cities and states consider childhood trauma a public health issue, Walla Walla’s success has transcended this former trading town. It now serves as a model for resilience-building in the burgeoning trauma-informed care movement that is sweeping the nation.

[For more of this story, written by Melissa Mellmann, go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/peo...nsion-rates-20170222]