In light of continuing gun violence nationwide, the need to talk about the impact and trauma of violence remains of utmost importance. Dr. Sandra Bloom, an associate professor at the DUSPH and co-director of the school’s Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice, has devoted her professional life to addressing the impact of traumatic experience on individuals, families, organizations, and culture.

Bloom has seen firsthand the effects of trauma on children and how they can carry adverse childhood experiences on into adulthood. She used her experiences working in inpatient psychiatric settings to write her first book, “Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies,” which to Bloom’s surprise, caught the attention of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services (JBFCS) and Dr. Jeanne Rivard, a researcher they were working with from the Columbia School of Social Work.

“JBFCS had three large residential programs in Westchester, NY and they knew that many of their kids—who were from all boroughs of Manhattan— had experienced a lot of trauma and adversity and they wanted to find out if what I had written about, ‘Creating Sanctuary,’ could be applied to the kids’ treatment. It was that study which allowed the Sanctuary Model to be evidence supported,” said Bloom.

Around this time, Bloom began working with the Andrus Children’s Center in Yonkers, NY.

“I had the administrator there form a team representing the administration, clinicians, teachers, teachers’ aides, and cottage staff. Many of the kids at Andrus had experienced trauma—but the staff didn’t know exactly what to do about that, how to help them to heal,” she said. “Out of that, those conversations turned into a whole training program for their staff. And once we had implemented that for their staff, it became reasonable that we could train other programs.”

Bloom and the team at Andrus developed a training program for their staff and then Bloom and Brian Farragher, Chief Operating Officer at Andrus, started responding to invitations from other treatment programs, interested in how they could implement trauma-informed services.

What evolved was the Sanctuary Institute, a nonprofit training program to teach and certify organizations in the Sanctuary Model. As Bloom recalled, “We assumed that a few programs would come to train with us but it mushroomed rapidly. We started training in 2005 and as of 2012, we have over 250 programs that have participated.”

According to Bloom, because the Sanctuary Model focuses on the organizational culture, it allows for a diverse group of programs to participate. In addition to residential programs for children, other participating groups include substance abuse programs, domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, a few academic programs, including two from Drexel (the Center for Hunger-Free Communities and Bloom’s own Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice), a managed care company, and some psychiatric hospitals. The Institute has trained programs from Scotland, Australia, Tasmania, Northern Ireland, and soon Singapore. Of note, in 2010, Bloom made her third trip out to Northern Ireland to help residents deal with the trauma of decades of violence in the country. There, she delivered the keynote address at the European Society of Trauma and Dissociation.

“I think word has spread because the knowledge about the connection between adversity in childhood and a wide variety of emotional, social, and physical problems is finally getting out in the world. And most people hear it as new information, but for me it’s been 25 years,” she laughed.

Bloom’s second book, “Destroying Sanctuary: The Crisis in Human Service Delivery Systems,” was published in 2012 and was written with Farragher. The idea for the book began when Bloom noticed that health care, mental health, and social services staff required a common framework so they could understand how an identity emerges from the collective work being done in organizations that cannot be understood just by looking at each individual’s beliefs and behavior. The book also discussed what leaders and participants in an organization can do to help the organization be healthier and more resilient in the face of chronic stress.

“It becomes a living being, the organization. And living beings can be chronically stressed and traumatized,” she said.

Coming out in early 2013 will be the third volume of the Sanctuary trilogy, also written with co-author Farragher. Titled “Restoring Sanctuary: A New Operating System for Trauma-Informed Systems of Care,” Bloom describes the book as an antidote to “Destroying.”

“It’s about asking, in the face of chronic stress, how can we address it and how can we help people who are trauma survivors in their recovery” she said. Coinciding with the publication of “Restoring,” Bloom’s first Sanctuary book, “Creating,” will also be republished as a new edition with a new forward by Bloom, while the second volume, “Destroying,” will be issued in paperback.

As for her work at DUSPH, Bloom, in her role as codirector of the School of Public Health’s Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice,—along with Center director Dr. John Rich, co-director Dr. Theodore Corbin, and other staff—helped create the “Healing Hurt People” program, a hospital-based violence intervention program. She also teaches a course for second-year MPH students.

“This is my collegial group. This is my home ground where I can expand the work into Philadelphia. The Center collaborated with the Sanctuary Institute to do a large project for the Department of Behavioral Health to introduce Sanctuary to a number of mental health centers around the city. It’s very exciting to bring those parts of my life together,” she said.

Bloom has also been busy as a frequent speaker on the topic of trauma and violence prevention. Most recently, she addressed about 500 principals from the Philadelphia School District about trauma and creating a safe school environment.

But she is already thinking about the future. For Bloom, the next hope for her work is taking what she’s learned from collaborating with organizations and sending it out into communities.

“How do we get this knowledge out so people can be activated to make changes that could profoundly affect our children and our society? If I could figure out anything that’s what I’d like to do. What constitutes a community, and how do you take these ideas that originated within coherent structured organizations, can they even be applied to a community? I don’t know, but I’m not afraid to go find out.”