Long Term Coalitions As a Tool for Social Change and Response Following Incidents of Disaster, Terrorism, Trauma and Community Violence

Background: Since 2005 The Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center has been active partners in community coalitions. Born out of the Hurricane Katrina needs, these coalitions have served many purposes from state and local recovery efforts, to Gulf Oil Spill response, child and adolescent trauma advocacy, integrated behavioral health, to the current national reach of the Terrorism and Disaster Coalition for Child and Adolescent Resilience (TDC4). While coalition building is not a new concept, many coalitions dissolve. This presentation is focused on the successes of the community participatory approaches and innovative ways to foster social change and connectedness around mental and behavioral health services following incidents of disaster, terrorism, trauma and community violence.

Methods: TDC4 is tasked with creating effective partnerships in disaster-prone regions to enhance national capacity to prepare and respond to the unique needs of children, adolescents, and families after critical incidents. The presentation will begin with an overview of the TDC4 and how in it’s forth year continues toward its mission of a Nationwide reach. TDC4 has coalitions in the Gulf Coast, Northeast and Midwest; the focus for each of these regions, led by community stakeholders, is different but content and resources are shared. In response to recent incidents of community violence, including the Sutherland Springs, Texas and Parkland, Florida shootings, members of the TDC4 coalition have actively responded to these impacted schools and communities. This presentation will differentiate intervention approaches undertaken by professionals intervening post-incident from local, state, regional, and national levels.

Results: Analyses of challenges, successes, and lessons learned will be described, with an emphasis placed on tailoring approaches based on careful needs assessments conducted to meet the unique needs of each school and community. We will demonstrate how these coalitions can respond to a various types of community crisis and disaster, especially in under sourced topics such as school shootings, incidents of community violence, and the recent pandemic. The key to success for these varying coalitions has been flexibility in both membership and focus. While the coalition has had a core membership, the drive is from new members and expert stakeholders. Response to incidents of disaster, terrorism or violence also help to focus the coalition, but tend to expand toward efforts of prevention and resource creation.

Conclusions: Participation and regular sharing of lessons learned on TDC4 sponsored and facilitated conference calls and meetings allow for more streamlined post-intervention responses, the opportunity to provide psychoeducation to prevent and address vicarious traumatization and burnout among responders, and the fostering of developmentally and culturally-sensitive incident responses. Next steps will focus on highlighting the importance of ongoing collaboration with trauma-informed experts and community stakeholder. Longer term coalitions, can be used as a tool for social change, that are driven by the community stakeholders and supported by experts with access to evidence informed resources.