Integrating Trauma Informed Care
WITH HENRY FORD HEALTH
Cross-departmental strategy to embed trauma-informed principles across the health system.In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a dedicated team at Henry Ford Health sought to embed trauma-informed practices across the system in order to improve outcomes for patients and working conditions for employees. As a nonprofit healthcare provider with 33,000 staff across 250 locations, including five acute care hospitals, enacting large-scale change across the organization required an extensive planning process that involved dozens of staff members across departments and locations. Over the course of two years, we worked together to develop the Trauma and Resiliency-Informed Community Healthcare Organization (TRICHO) initiative, which addresses trauma through education, prevention, and organizational change.
The initiative aligns practices and embeds trauma-informed principles comprehensively across policies, training, and patient care. The Work Department played a key role in planning and facilitating TRICHO’s development. We designed and led working sessions with a multi-disciplinary task force, helping to establish guiding principles, assess existing trauma initiatives, and explore integration opportunities. We developed a charter, defined the initiative’s scope, and structured a roadmap for implementation.
Task force members included frontline staff with shared experience of trauma’s impact on patients and colleagues, support staff with insights on operational feasibility, community partnership representatives who considered how TRICHO’s principles could connect with external organizations, and leadership teams focused on fostering a trauma-informed culture.
Through structured discussions, the task force identified gaps, developed recommendations, and worked to secure leadership buy-in with a plan towards long-term integration. Initial implementation included pilot projects, such as staff training programs to increase awareness, community outreach strategies to strengthen trauma-informed partnerships, and workplace interventions to integrate trauma-informed leadership practices.
The TRICHO initiative resulted in a framework and internal working group for ongoing integration of trauma and resiliency-informed care.