Embracing Equity and Cultural Humility to Improve Care for Youth with Trauma

The Connecticut-based Weitzman Institute and the National Council for Mental Wellbeing Center of Excellence are launching a new resource - Embracing Equity and Cultural Humility to Improve Care for Youth with Trauma.

Developed by the Weitzman ECHO Childhood Trauma’s subject matter expert faculty team, this resource – a 16-page guide booklet - provides recommendations to primary care and school-based medical providers, behavioral health providers, and other care team members to incorporate culture, race, and equity into trauma-informed care practices when caring for children with adverse childhood experiences.

Using content from this ECHO, faculty designed the newly-released 5L Health Equity Framework for Health Care Clinicians and Organizations included in this resource.

By adopting attitudes of lifelong learning, critical self-reflection, and systems-level analysis, clinicians can better understand and address the complex interplay of individual, cultural, and societal factors that shape trauma experiences and healing processes, the organizations point out.

Using language that affirms cultural identities, challenges power hierarchies and promotes collaboration, this resource booklet highlights the:

•  Impact of systemic inequities on marginalized youth, including neurodivergent, LGTBQ+, and biracial youth

• Limitations of cultural competency alone and promotes culturally humble care

• Significance of building trust with vulnerability and humility through analysis and recommendations of patient cases

•  Importance of promoting self-care with compassion inquiry

Data from the 2019 National Survey of Children’s Health shows 21% of children in the United States have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE); it has also shown that certain racial and ethnic groups have an increased prevalence of ACEs, according to officials.

For example, 27% of Black children and 23% of Hispanic children have experienced at least one ACE. Additionally, LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent youth are at higher risk of experiencing ACEs. Clinicians and school-based health providers can address ACEs during care by incorporating cultural and racial equity into trauma-informed care, and considering how broader cultural, political and societal factors affect trauma in youth, they point out. 

This resource booklet provides considerations, practical recommendations, case studies and self-care approaches for youth-serving primary care and mental health professionals to ensure providers are well equipped to enhance quality of care, improve patient outcomes and reduce clinician burnout.

In 2021, in collaboration with the National Council, the Weitzman Institute launched its first long-term continuing education series to address childhood trauma. The Weitzman ECHO Childhood Trauma has connected primary care clinicians, school-based health professionals and other care team members to subject matter experts. The Weitzman ECHO Childhood Trauma has had four cohorts annually, ranging from 10 to 22 one-hour sessions, targeted to improve care for youth experiencing trauma through an interdisciplinary care model.