CINCINNATI — A coalition of community and medical leaders is pushing for systemic change in Cincinnati when it comes to addressing and preventing trauma. The goal is to address root causes of trauma to better manage its impact and improve equity.
The group includes representatives from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, George Washington University’s Center for Community Resilience and the University of Cincinnati, according to a presentation submitted to city council.
“You find out why children and their parents are behaving the way they do, and that there is a way to help,” said Pastor Ennis Tait with New Beginnings Church of the Living God Avondale.
Tait said work on the effort has been going on for years.
Experts in the group say that trauma can include household disruption, sexual abuse, physical violence, substance abuse, parental incarceration and more.
“Here in Cincinnati, one of the leading drivers of adversity is poverty,” said Dr. Wendy Ellis, director of the Center for Community Resilience at George Washington University. “When you think about living in poverty, think about all the adversities that go with that. That means food insecurity, that oftentimes means homelessness or housing insecurity.”
The group said those adversities lead to adverse outcomes, including unemployment, lower grades and poor health.
“The trauma can relate to so many other factors,” Tait said.
The group is pushing for a cultural shift within the city for how leaders approach trauma.
"The whole concept of equity puts responsibility in the hands of our city leaders and our legislators to really create policies that support our commitment to putting these strategies in place and then creating a funding stream that allows this office and this work to continue and not be subject to political wills," he said, referring to the city's Office of Equity.
One idea is to create a healing cities initiative. Baltimore passed one a few years ago.
Baltimore City Council Member Zeke Cohen said the policy emerged after a school shooting. City leaders asked young people to share what they thought should be done to reduce their exposure to gun violence.
“They said, ‘Look, city leaders spend way too much time thinking about how to better police us when you should be thinking about how to prevent trauma from occurring in our lives in the first place,’” Cohen said. “They named every single adverse childhood experience in the book.”
Cohen said Baltimore’s “Healing City Act” mandates city agencies be trained in trauma-informed care.
“We do a really deep dive,” he said. “Spend about a year working with them and we go top to bottom, from leadership to front line folks, teaching them the brain science of trauma.”
The law also implemented a careful review of policies and procedures in city agencies to determine whether they are aligned with a trauma-informed approach.
It also created a task force to come up with solutions to reduce trauma in Baltimore.
“There's still a profound divide within our cities,” Cohen said. “A lot of what we want to do with the Healing City Act is not only just to address sort of the day-to-day mental health issues that we're having, but also really look deeply at our history.”
Cohen will testify before city council virtually on Tuesday, along with other members of the coalition.
Another idea put forward by the coalition is to implement equity and opportunity dashboards.
Ellis said the dashboards have been in development for about ten years, and rely on public data focused on health, home ownership, educational outcomes and more. She said they will help city leaders understand if targeted investments are having an impact on communities.
The group said this work is critical to improving overall outcomes across the city.
“This information, the data helps inform our strategic moves,” said Tait. “As well as our decision-making about how we're going to support families. It helps to really deal with the problems, and not just the symptoms.”
