Incorporating Racial Equity into Trauma-Informed Care

With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Center for Health Care Strategies published a new brief that outlines six considerations for health systems and provider practices looking to integrate a focus on racial equity to enhance trauma-informed care approaches and promote racial justice. It draws from the experiences of two organizations participating in the Advancing Integrated Models initiative, also funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In recent years, trauma-informed care has become a valuable tool to assist health care providers in delivering more person-centered care. Trauma-informed care seeks to both acknowledge the role trauma plays in people’s lives and the impact it has on their health and well-being, and to engage in practices that prevent re-traumatizing individuals. As the health care sector, like many industries, faces its own racial reckoning, trauma-informed approaches to care should not overlook the critical impact of racism and racialized trauma on patient health and staff well-being. The work of trauma-informed care requires a nuanced understanding of not only how trauma impacts the lives and care of patients, but the root causes behind that trauma. Health care organizations that adopt a trauma-informed approach to care should acknowledge and be held accountable for the historical and present-day trauma experienced by patients and staff from communities of color.