Honorary Co-Hosts:
Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Wendy Ellis, Project Director of the Building Community Resilience Collaborative and MARC National Advisor will moderate the session.
Organized by: American Academy of Pediatrics, Futures Without Violence, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice
This briefing will provide an overview of the impact of trauma on the developing brain, effective federal policies for addressing trauma, and strategies to deliver trauma-informed care to children.
- Kana Enomoto, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Mental Health, HHS
- Dr. Zach Kaminsky, PhD,Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
- The Hon. Judge Dan H. Michael, Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County, TN
- Dr. Joe Wright, MD, MPH, FAAP, Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at Howard Univ. College of Medicine
Background: When children experience serious traumatic events—witnessing violence, a parent’s substance abuse, or living in extreme poverty—they can suffer. Decades of research have established the link between a child’s exposure to trauma, its effect on brain development, and long-term health and societal outcomes, such as chronic disease development, mental health disorders, high school graduation, and poverty.
Children who have experienced four serious negative experiences are twice as likely not to graduate high school, ten times more likely to inject drugs, and twelve times more likely to commit suicide than children who experienced zero serious adverse experiences.
The good news is that there are approaches and interventions that can effectively prevent and mitigate the impact of trauma. Schools, health care, social services, child welfare, first responders, juvenile and family courts, and other settings must all have the tools and federal support to recognize trauma and coordinate services to address the effects of trauma on children.
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