Becoming Healing-Centered: Organizations

Healthcare

• ACEs Aware
  The ACEs Aware initiative is a first-in-the nation effort to screen patients for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) to help improve and save lives. ACEs Aware offers information and training for clinicians on ACE fundamentals, ACEs screening, and treatment and healing. It also has resources for clinicians, patients/families, and policy makers on the following topics: the science of toxic stress, trauma-informed systems, screening and clinical response, resilience-building interventions, and self-care tools. Led by the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and the Office of the California Surgeon General (CA-OSG) as part of Governor Gavin Newsom’s California For All initiative. The website also has links to published work by ACEs Aware grantees across California. 
   
• Addressing Health Worker Burnout: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on Building a Thriving Health Workforce, 2022
  This Advisory contains steps that different stakeholders can take together to address health worker burnout. It calls for change in the systems, structures, and cultures that shape health care. 
   
• Adverse Childhood Experiences: Survey of Resident Practice, Knowledge, and Attitude, 2016

  This study examines family medicine resident practices screening adult patients for ACEs, knowledge of ACEs, attitudes to screening, resident personal ACE histories, and determines preferred ways to learn more about ACEs if gaps were identified. Resident ACE screening rates were found to be extremely low, prompting the recommendation of physician educational initiatives.
  [Tink, W., Tink, J., Turin, T., Kelly, M. (2017). Adverse Childhood Experiences: Survey of Resident Practice, Knowledge, and Attitude. Fam Med, 49(1), 7-13. PMID: 28166574]

• Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement: A Conceptual Model to Advance Health Equity through Transformed Systems for Health, 2022
  This resource from the Organizing Committee for Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement in Health & Health Care Programs & Policies of the National Academy of Medicine identifies concepts and metrics that can best assess the extent, process, and impact of community engagement. This effort aims to provide community-engaged, effective, and evidence-based tools to those who want to measure engagement to ensure that it is meaningful and impactful, emphasizing equity as a critical input and outcome. This commentary will describe how the Organizing Committee arrived at the conceptual model, the critical content that the model contains and expresses, and how the model can be used to assess meaningful community engagement.
   
• Center for Youth Wellness Learning onDemand Courses
  Developed by a team of pediatricians, research scientists, public health experts, and clinical quality improvement experts, these courses were designed to support providers and administrators nationwide seeking to transform their practices toward trauma-informed care. The courses also provide a great supplement to the State of California’s two-hour course that trains Medi-Cal providers on clinical protocols and payment for screening children and adults for ACEs.
   
• Engaging Experts: All About ACEs, 2022 (4 minute video)
  Dr. Rachel Gilgoff explains how knowledge of a patient’s ACEs can help health care providers better understand underlying causes of health conditions, improve patient-provider relationships, and build upon patient strengths to promote healing. She also highlights strategies for mitigating toxic stress and shares her vision for how Pathways to Resilience can foster cross-sector partnerships to “help people live long, healthy, and meaningful lives.”
   
• HCDC Pediatrics Online Toolkit for Pediatric Health Care Providers and Caregivers
  This website and suite of products is curated specifically by and for pediatricians and pediatric health care professionals. It offers resources and tools to help change pediatric health care professionals' mind-sets and habits. It draws from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child's extensive library of established resources and features newly created content, including briefs, handouts for providers and for caregivers, and in-depth articles. The intended outcome is to build health care professionals' understanding of the science of early childhood, so that they can adapt and apply these scientific principles within their clinical practices. It includes Caregiver Handouts of Games and Activities that parents can do with children of different ages. 
   
• How Mindfulness can help Physicians, Nurses, and other Health Care Professionals, 2019
  For health care professionals. Dr. Jud Brewer's seminar series will help primary care providers understand how our brains form unhealthy habits that lead to common yet difficult to treat conditions such as obesity and anxiety, what mindfulness is (and isn’t), how mindfulness works in the brain to affect behavior change, what the current evidence base is behind it, how it can help us “hack” our brains for better health and how one might apply the learnings to patients.
   
• Improving and Expanding Programs to Support a Diverse Health Care Workforce: Recommendations for Policy and Practice, 2022
  Drawing from interviews and focus groups with dozens of students, professionals, and field leaders, this study from the Urban Institute examines the persistent barriers and challenges facing aspiring doctors and nurses from systemically and structurally excluded groups and proposes recommended actions that federal and state policymakers, leaders at higher education and health system institutions, and philanthropies can take to support these students and professionals, particularly through the expanded and improved use of pathway programs. This report is accompanied by three summaries of findings and recommendations for key audiences.
   
• Iowa ACES 360 Resources for Health Care
  Clinicians and staff in the healthcare field have a unique opportunity to address toxic stress in individuals and advocate for developing systems that build strong, stable, nurturing communities. This site has handouts, guides, and resources for health care providers.
   
• Ka’m-t’em: The Impact of ACEs and Toxic Stress on Indigenous Communities
  This ACEs Aware Supplemental Training utilizes concepts from “Ka’m-t’em: A Journey Toward Healing” to change and save lives by helping providers understand the importance of screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences and training providers to respond with trauma-informed care to mitigate the health impacts of toxic stress.
   
• Key Ingredients for Successful Trauma-Informed Care Implementation, 2016
  This brief and its related infographic and fact sheet, produced as part of Advancing Trauma-Informed Care, are intended to help healthcare providers address traumatic experiences and associated health effects seen in patients and outline a practical implementation framework and policy considerations for instituting trauma-informed approaches to care in health care settings. Profiles of trauma-informed care champions can also be found on the website.
   
• Keystones of Development Curriculum
  This online curriculum from Mount Sinai Parenting Center demonstrates how residents can promote brain development and help strengthen parent-child relationships within the confines of routine well-child visits. Sparks videos for parents can be a part of this effort. 
   
• National Guidelines for Child and Youth Behavioral Health Crisis Care by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 2022
  This manual offers best practices, implementation strategies, and practical guidance for the design and development of services that meet the needs of children, youth, and their families experiencing a behavioral health crisis. 
   
• A Roadmap for Trauma-Informed Organizations by Resilient Georgia
  ​The implementation of a trauma-informed approach is an ongoing organizational paradigm shift. Trainings on this website are divided into Trauma Aware, Trauma, Sensitive, Trauma Responsive, and Trauma Informed for the following sectors: first responders, healthcare providers, faith-based, juvenile justice, community, early childhood & education, youth-serving organizations, public health/social services, youth, school, parents & caregivers, and business.
   
• Training Staff in Trauma Treatments: Considerations for Complex Care Providers, 2017
  The experiences of five complex care organizations across the country in training their staff in a variety of evidence-based trauma treatment approaches (Seeking Safety; Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing; and Attachment, Regulation, and Competency) are outlined in this technical assistance brief. The purpose is to inform the efforts of other provider organizations seeking to adopt an evidence-based approach to trauma treatment.
   
• Trauma-Informed Care, 2021

  Most children will experience some type of trauma during childhood, and many children suffer from significant adversities. Research in genetics, neuroscience, and epidemiology all provide evidence that these experiences have effects at the molecular, cellular, and organ level, with consequences on physical, emotional, developmental, and behavioral health across the life span. Trauma-informed care translates that science to inform and improve pediatric care and outcomes. To practically address trauma and promote resilience, pediatric clinicians need tools to assess childhood trauma and adversity experiences as well as practical guidance, resources, and interventions. In this clinical report, we summarize current, practical advice for rendering trauma-informed care across varied medical settings. 

  [Forkey, H., Szilagyi, M., Kelly, E., Duffee, J. (2021). Trauma-Informed Care. Pediatrics, 148(2), e2021052580; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2021-052580]