A Public Partnership to Support Well-Being: Population Health Implementation of Trauma and Resilience Informed Care Across Child and Family Ecosystems

Abstract

Early life adversity and trauma can jeopardize child and family well-being. Mitigating the effects of early adversity and trauma requires a tiered, public health approach that includes trauma-informed mental health promotion, prevention, screening, early intervention, and effective and equitable treatment across community ecosystems and service systems. This article describes the development of a partnership between a public academic (University of California at Los Angeles) and community mental health system (Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health) and provides a roadmap for core principles and actionable steps to implement coherent, comprehensive, and adaptive trauma-informed community systems of support for children.

Keywords: Child and family well-being; Equity; Implementation; Learning system; Population health; Public mental health partnership; Resilience; Trauma-informed.