In 2017, Exodus Transitional Community (ETC) was funded by CJII to develop the Center for Trauma Innovation (CTI). The CTI aims to serve participants who have experienced chronic trauma related, but not limited, to incarceration, poverty, racism, and experiencing/witnessing community violence. It does so through three core prongs: direct services, training and technical assistance, and a learning community.

The CTI is working with an evaluation team at the Center for Complex Trauma (CCT) at Icahn School of Medicine to understand the program’s implementation and impact by using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach.

To conduct a process evaluation of the program, the CCT used Community-Based Participatory Research methods, a model that incorporates the perspectives of program staff, participants, and funders in research design and execution. This report details that process, as well as the program’s impact on system-impacted communities in East Harlem and beyond, detailing its operations, effectiveness, and areas for improvement.

CUNY ISLG’s blog details several ways that CTI approaches trauma healing.

Download the evaluation.

As part of this partnership, the CCT produced this process evaluation as well as a series of briefs that explore these core prongs in theory, how they were put into practice by the CTI, and their impact on participants and the community. The first memo explores the role of learning communities in this evaluation. In the second memo, the focus shifts to the use of data and collaboration to inform future program recommendations. The third memo looks into how participants’ characteristics impacted how the healed from and coped with the trauma.