The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announces a new National Center for Relational Health and Trauma-Informed Care, which serves as a centralized, trusted source for information, resources, and evidence-informed education to support children, adolescents and families through a universal, trauma-informed approach to care.
Pediatricians and other pediatric health care professionals can receive training from the center on how to provide trauma-informed care, support children and families to heal from trauma, and offer guidance to support healthy mental development. The center is grounded in the importance of nurturing relationships - especially those between parents/caregivers and children and promoted through their pediatric care teams.
Through partnerships with the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, the center strives to incorporate relational health and trauma-informed care into all levels of pediatric care. Through this work, the center provides pediatricians with the tools to promote safe, stable, and nurturing relationships in the families they care for.
The AAP recommends implementing a trauma-informed approach as the standard of care for all patients. The center will enable AAP to support pediatricians in moving away from asking questions like “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” and “What’s strong with you?”.
Medical Directors Heather Forkey, MD, FAAP and Moira Szilagyi, MD, PhD, FAAP will lead the center. The pair have decades of experience in caring for children in the foster care system and educating pediatricians and others about trauma, relational health, and resilience. They were among the authors of several clinical reports that help to guide AAP policy on trauma-informed care and the book Childhood Trauma & Resilience: A Practical Guide.
“Pediatricians know firsthand that the combination of biology, experiences, and relationships deeply influence the course of child development—that the buffers children have and the challenges they face help them to become who they are,” said Dr. Szilagyi, past president of AAP. “Healthy relationships create the context for optimal child development because they center the child, protecting them, teaching them, and nurturing them. Through these relationships and other positive experiences, children develop skills that promote self-efficacy, independence, and responsibility. The national center helps pediatricians and families actualize relational health supports to prevent childhood trauma and to ameliorate and treat its effects.”
In addition to Dr. Forkey and Dr. Szilagyi, the center is guided by an Expert Leadership Team of pediatricians and child and adolescent psychiatrists with diverse backgrounds and decades of expertise in caring for children and families who have experienced trauma. The center also s with a team of caregivers and young adults with lived expertise, as well as a National Partner Council made up of community-based and national organizations working to support child and family wellbeing.
This center was developed in partnership with and is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
“This represents an exciting moment, as we expand the ability of the AAP to support the pediatrician’s role in fostering child and family resilience and addressing the effects of trauma,” Dr. Forkey said. “If we listen closely to children and families, they tell us what they need. We need to understand what they are saying and how to respond.”
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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.