Project Corazón: Innovating Child Trauma Treatment for Northern New Mexico Las Cumbres Community Services has been a funded member of the NCTSN since 2012, and provides trauma-focused treatment to children ages 0-18 and their families across four rural counties in northern New Mexico. Evidence-based and evidence-informed programs (EBPs) including Circle of Security ParentingTM, Child Parent Psychotherapy, Child-Centered Play Therapy, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy are delivered in a staged treatment design to address a range of traumatic stressors, with focus on complex trauma. This integrated array of EBPs are offered to children and their families through a combination of individual, family, and group therapy. Project Corazón improves access to quality care in rural areas for special populations (immigrant and refugee families, women with young children in substance use recovery, and children forcibly separated from caregivers due to abuse, neglect or deportation), supports advanced clinical training, and grows the children’s behavioral health workforce in a designated Mental Health Provider Shortage Area. Direct service goals aim to improve engagement, enrollment, and efficacy outcomes for families experiencing complex trauma and parent-child separations, resolve symptoms of traumatic stress, and repair/strengthen caregiver-child relationships. EBP modification goals and workforce initiatives aim to increase access to care and improve retention rates of experienced clinicians.

Lifeline Center for Child Development empowers children to develop and use their behavioral tools so that they may reach their full potential in academic, social and family arenas during childhood, and go on to live their full potential in adulthood. At Lifeline, children with mental illness, and their families, will find the resources to meet their needs, from early childhood through early adulthood, in a nurturing, progressive, and informed environment focused on their full health and wellness.

The Supporting Purposeful Interventions and Resilience in Trauma (SPIRIT) program will serve youth with chronic medical conditions referred by Lurie Children’s inpatient consultation-liaison service and partnering primary and specialty care clinics. Youth will be screened for trauma exposure, symptoms, and impairment using the Pediatric Traumatic Stress Care Process Model (CPM). The program will serve youth ages 8-18 years old who have a chronic physical health condition and trauma exposure and is composed of staff from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago Trauma Treatment Service (TTS). TTS primarily serves residents of Chicago and children from across Illinois and Indiana. Goals of the project include increasing the ability of pediatric healthcare providers to identify trauma exposure and distress in their patients with a chronic medical condition and link with appropriate interventions, and decreasing trauma-related symptoms and impairment by implementing evidence-based and trauma-focused treatment services for youth with chronic medical conditions.

The Mental Health Disparities Among Trauma-Exposed Youth Center is located within the Mental Health Disparities and Diversity Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. Our center focuses on increasing access to, engagement in, and completion of culturally- and linguistically-appropriate, evidence-based treatments (EBT) for trauma-exposed African American, Latino, economically-disadvantaged, and rural/urban children and adolescents residing in 9 counties across South Carolina. We have a particular focus on utilizing specialized service modalities with evidence of reducing barriers to care, in particular community-based treatment and telemental health. The center seeks to (1) increase access to EBTs, among underserved populations through community-, telemedicine-, and office-based service provision modalities; (2) increase capacity of therapists to provide EBTs (Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Culturally Modified-TF-CBT (CM-TF-CBT)) through learning collaboratives on EBTs; and (3) increase completion of services through reducing barriers to care and the provision of culturally-tailored treatment aimed at increasing engagement and reducing premature drop-out. Services are provided in a variety of community locations, including local child advocacy centers, schools, and pediatric primary care locations.