National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives

Overview

In April 2023, the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) sponsored a statewide summit, “Leveraging North Carolina’s Assets to Prevent Child Trauma." Nearly 150 representatives from academia, community and state organizations, lived experience, philanthropy, government agencies, and governing bodies convened in person, and approximately 230 joined the event virtually. Diana “Denni” Fishbein, PhD, a senior scientist at FPG, and Melissa Clepper-Faith, MD, MPH, translational research program and policy coordinator at FPG, organized this two-day event. The recording of this event is now available for access and continuing education credit.

The overarching goal of the summit was to identify common threads across constituent groups in North Carolina, each working to address child trauma, and determine how, together, we can co-create a statewide effort in community and policy spaces to tackle its sources and reduce its incidence. Organizers and participants agree this can be achieved by:

• sharing knowledge and experience about child trauma, its causes, and its prevention;
• bolstering community efforts through a shared understanding of trauma science;
• creating new relationships between individuals and organizations and strengthening existing relationships;
• illuminating the current landscape of child trauma prevention across North Carolina communities to help assess strengths and gaps; and
• beginning a process of generating policy recommendations to prevent child trauma.

Themes identified at the summit

Child trauma has myriad effects and solutions. Not every important idea could be shared at a two-day summit or in its executive summary, but there were a few themes that arose repeatedly:

Preventing child trauma and addressing child trauma to prevent long-term harm require:

• supporting parents to reduce economic stress with access to affordable housing, food, childcare, and dependable employment or income;
• addressing systemic root causes, including structural racism, health inequities, and economic stress;
• transitioning to trauma-informed practices in many settings, including families, schools, communities, child welfare system, healthcare, legislative, and criminal justice;
• interrupting the cycle by addressing trauma in children, adolescents, and young adults before they become parents;
• expanding access to mental health assessment and access for children and parents, including addiction prevention and treatment;
• educating people and organizations to change violent social norms and improve interpersonal relationships; and
• providing universal high-quality early childhood education.

Effective approaches for moving forward include:

• People with lived experience of child trauma must be part of developing policies and programs regarding child trauma.
• There is no silver bullet; preventing child trauma as a society requires a lot of pieces.
• Strategic alignment and collective action are critical; no one person, community organization, agency, foundation, nonprofit, or legislative body can do it alone.
• Prevention and early intervention are better than later intervention.
• Sustainable funding is needed to ramp up evidence-based prevention programs; these programs save society money in the long run.
• Local organizations and philanthropy can make a difference in communities and demonstrate effective strategies.
• Advocacy is an effective tool to institute trauma-informed policies at national, state, or local levels.

To explore a series of articles on key topics raised during the summit, the executive summary, and more about child trauma, visit: https://fpg.unc.edu/2023-statewide-summit-leveraging-north-carolinas-assets-prevent-child-trauma