Trauma-Informed Policy with Jesse Kohler
If we want to live in healthy, resilient communities, we need to be thinking about who we are electing and what policies they are moving forward to make that possible. A trauma-informed future is possible and we need to be thinking about it at a policy level. In today's episode of A Trauma-Informed Future podcast, host Katie Kurtz is in conversation with policy advocate and Executive Director of the CTIPP (Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice), Jesse Kohler who is bringing his extensive knowledge and advocacy experience to the forefront. Since its inception in 2015, CTIPP has been a beacon for change, advocating for trauma-informed policies and practices at a federal level and uniting advocates across various sectors. Learn how trauma isn't just a personal concern, but a bipartisan issue whose resolution holds key economic benefits and takeaway tangible ways you can get involved in your state.
Learn more about Jesse:
Serving as CTIPP’s Executive Director on loan, Jesse is in charge of organizational administration and HR, fundraising, strategic planning, public engagements, and working to create conditions of safety and empowerment for the board, staff, and volunteers in their roles with the organization.
Jesse is on loan from The Change Campaign, which is a nonprofit organization Jesse founded. The Change Campaign is a multi-pronged initiative to build community and systemic capacity by facilitating the application of the science of developmental adversity and its progression through the lifespan and generations to enable initiatives that improve holistic well-being and provide strategic support to government agencies and organizations focused in aligned areas. Above all else, Jesse has always had a strong vision for change that would make our world a better place for all.
Born and raised outside of Philadelphia, after graduating from Oberlin College, Jesse spent the first part of his career working for various nonprofits serving Philadelphia communities and at the state level for the Office of Attorney General and the Governor’s Campaign. While in graduate school, Jesse started with CTIPP as its first intern, then served as a board member for several years before becoming its first Executive Director.
Connect with Jesse:
Website: https://www.ctipp.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CTIPPorg
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/@ctipp
Mentioned in this episode:
Show Transcript:
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Hi, everyone, and welcome to A Trauma Informed Future podcast. I am delighted to my friend Jessie. Welcome to the podcast. It's always so good to see you and I can see you, no one else can see you, but to talk with you and be in conversation around your work and the future of trauma informed care when it comes to trauma informed policy and the work of states within the U. S. And just to be in your company you share a wealth of knowledge and passion that's so visceral and exciting and hopeful. So welcome. So good to see you and have you here today.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Thanks, Katie. It's awesome to be here with you.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): So Jesse, let's talk about CTIPP. , we love an acronym, so maybe just tell us what it is.
If you can share a little bit about the history of the organization, the purpose and why it's so important, especially for those of us who are trauma informed leaders and to know about this work and also be involved in any way possible.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah, who doesn't love a good acronym, [00:01:00] right?
So CTIPP stands for the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice. We were founded back in 2015, became an official non profit organization in 2016. But the history was that a lot of the leaders, of the trauma informed movement historically recognized that there was not a conversation on the hill or in the halls of government at any level really about the importance of trauma informed care.
We were dealing with so many of the outcomes associated with trauma across the lifespan. Without addressing the root cause of what was driving those problems and the investments were piling up, we were going further and further into debt as we continue to do, and there wasn't this understanding of the promise of trauma informed practices, and so that was one big piece, was that there was a missing advocacy voice on the Hill specifically, federally, in a lot of states, and communities.
There were wonderful advocates that were moving this work [00:02:00] forward. There was a recognition that there needed to be a national voice and , there are states that still need more work to be done. Really, I think that part of being trauma informed is that work is ongoing and there will always be more work to be done.
But anyway, rant aside , there was a recognition of that and That the trauma informed movement was very siloed, right? We know that one of the hallmarks of trauma is fragmentation, whether that be at an individual level, fragmentation of a story. At a very macro level, we can see that with siloing and fracturing of systems and fragmentation there.
And so to create a comprehensive vision of what a truly trauma informed future looked like, it needed to move beyond the individual silos where the work is very important in trauma informed education, trauma informed healthcare, trauma informed criminal legal system, and so on. But also, what does it look like when a society as a whole is not as fragmented as when there is a more holistic [00:03:00] continuity of a society as a whole.
And those two places are really where CTIPP was rooted. And again, Sandy Bloom was our original chair who founded the Sanctuary Model at the time, has since come out with the Presence Model and a lot of others who have done tremendous work at a state and community level. And then we were grounded by an attorney by the name of Dan Press, who had a tremendous amount of experience on the Hill and was really the key advocate at the beginning of CTIPP to get us into the halls of Congress to begin to have these conversations.
And he had a long career working around tribal employment rights and with Native American tribes. And learned about ACEs, learned about trauma later on in his career and was like, This is the root cause of so much of what I've been seeing throughout my career. And so he became a really passionate advocate for the last decade or so of his life.
And that's how CTIPP started. And that's the purpose that we were oriented in and I am very [00:04:00] proud to be part of an organization that, you know, that the projects grow, the programs change over time, and we continue to evolve as to how we are going to achieve that mission. But I don't think that we as an organization have really ever swayed away from trying to bring together voice and, over time, not just have one person speaking, but bring together thousands and hopefully someday millions of advocates all over the country to speak through their lenses of their lived experiences about why trauma informed care is so important to continue to educate across the spectrum as we move toward a trauma informed society. But I think that over the 10 years of our history, more or less we've been consistent in what it is that we're trying to achieve.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I think it's so important that when we think about trauma informed care and the future of trauma informed care, we're looking at all these layers right from an individual perspective, a collective, a community, the [00:05:00] societal , and looking at trauma informed leadership where very important decisions are made at systemic levels.
That is where change is so needed and where the impact lies but we know it's a long game and it takes a quite a bit of finessing to really make those shifts happen and I already have three burning questions for you for when you're talking, but can you just share a little bit about what is CTIPP do in a day to day?
Yes, being the voice and the convener at this kind of federal level and with, our elected officials and that coalition building. But what are some of the specific things you're offering and for folks listening who, especially who live in the U. S. to have more familiarity with what you do?
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah, it's a great question. I appreciate the opportunity to expand. So we have First of all, just a resource library where we have developed toolkits and different resources that are free and good for [00:06:00] advocates, good for practitioners at some level.
It doesn't go deep enough to be like an implementation guide. That is a whole different thing. We are trying to be able to help communicate more easily for policies and to advocate for practices to get us moving in the right direction. And so across workplaces, schools, many other settings, we have a number of toolkits that can be helpful that, we are constantly trying to come out with new content that is helpful to move the movement forward as we see where there are sticking points that we can continue to let dominoes fall.
The two main areas that I'll speak to though in terms of our day to your question is. One is that we have what we call our Community Advocacy Network, CTIPPCAN, and for all what that was always intended to be was a space that advocates who are advocating for trauma informed policies and practices at any level can come together, gain information network and build the movement through a groundswell [00:07:00] of support, right? Because a lot of times when we talk about how politics moves in our country, you have one or two, one of two, or hopefully both things. One is a lot of money, right? Can buy a lot of good. We are a very small organization. Our operating budget is somewhere in around like in the two to three hundred thousand dollar range.
We are a small, nimble organization. And our movement is nascent. It is very new. But there are not, there's not a ton of money flowing through the trauma informed movement to where, and so even more powerfully, because at the end of the day, what money helps buy when you buy advertisements and all is people and that human resource to be able to mobilize voice and to be able for, Thousands and like I said, hopefully millions of people to talk about why a specific issue area or topic is so important to them is the gold mine for politics because at the end of the day, policymakers need to be elected for the most part, right?
And so [00:08:00] to know that your constituents, people who vote for you feel so powerfully about a particular issue is really important. And so with CTIPP can, as it has evolved. There's been a lot of education on our toolkits to try to mobilize around specific issues. Where we are moving in the future at the time that we're recording this, at least, in September of 2024 is going to be the first month that we're creating somewhat of a community of practice to talk about how we are being trauma informed while Promoting trauma informed policies and practices.
How are we congruent with a trauma informed approach as advocates and bring people together? We know that in social justice movements, the ways in which we advocate the method of advocacy is important. as important as the individual policies that we are advocating for. We saw this so powerfully in the civil rights movement.
We have seen it in other movements as well, that the underlying philosophy becomes very important. It's important for us [00:09:00] as advocates because we know that it can create such positive change. burnout and stress. And so how are we taking care of ourselves? How are we also understanding the stresses that other people are going through, the people that we're advocating to and for and with, and how are we developing relationships because we are in a movement that is so built around.
The importance of healthy relationships, right? And so really trying to build that methodology while supporting individual policies, right? So CTIPP has a few. Our main bread and butter is really advocating for cross sector community coalitions. And there's a couple bills that are moving at the federal level that work on that.
We also support the reauthorization right now of an interagency task force on trauma informed care and trying to get that agency operation reauthorized to be able to do work. But we also want to support and recognize that there's, across the lifespan, you can advocate for trauma informed policies.
And with our Community Advocacy Network, we [00:10:00] hope that people come in, if you don't know what you want to advocate for, or, what bill or at what level you want to advocate, We have those federal bills that we are happy to get as many people mobilizing around as possible. Also, if there are people who are interested in schools or early childhood at a state or local level, or aging services at a state level, there are, or anything between the two extremes of the lifespan, we want to invite folks in to bring their policy issues to CTIPPCAN.
And be able to really learn the methodology, help us understand network with others. So that way they aren't isolated in their advocacy and build the movement that way. And so see tip can is hitting its next iteration. And we are really excited about where it's heading. The other place that we.
Spend a lot of our time is I'll call it broadly a Press On Coalition you'll remember one of the founders, his name was Dan Press. He unfortunately passed away a couple of years [00:11:00] ago. But the vision that he left us with was having the power of a national organization. Being that it can develop relationships with state coalitions, that ultimately the importance is developing local community coalitions that are driving this work that impacts people on a day to day basis, right?
Where they live and work and play within their own communities and neighborhoods. And that we're able to learn from the innovation of what different community groups are doing, what different states are doing. synthesize that information and then mobilize together to be able to create more policies that create the conditions for more of that work to be going on.
And that bi directional flow within a scaffolded infrastructure from the national to the state to the regional, if need be, to the local level allows for us to Co create an evidence base, if you will, that further perpetuates and propels the trauma informed movement forward. The way that we are [00:12:00] starting that right now, because that is a really big vision of where we hope to go, that I can go into the vision of everything that I hope happens moving forward, is we are working with communities who are working to build population level resilience to the impacts of climate related and other disasters.
So rather than just reacting and responding, to a disaster when it occurs, which is necessary. We know that we can do so much to build social connections and have plans. So that way we prevent a lot of the damage and harm that is done and create greater community cohesion in some of the hardest moments.
And we know enough to move forward with that. And we've had the pleasure of getting to work with and our relationship with the International Transformational Resilience Coalition, which is really a leader, Bob Doppel, who started that organization and coalition is like the expert in this area. He was an ecologist, a climate ecologist and a clinical psychologist and came into this.[00:13:00]
Very interesting Venn diagram, like the middle of a Venn diagram but we see that as a tremendous opportunity to start to mobilize the coalitions that are forming and give some TA, give some education. And then to be able to learn how to create that infrastructure to get into the broader press on vision and so way, way too long for me to talk, but I'm excited about it.
We've got CTIPPcan, which is the direct advocacy. PressOn, which is the coalition work and the community work that we're driving. And then IdeasLab, which as I mentioned earlier, houses all of those resources that are open source and free for folks to use.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thank you so much. I think this is so important and I get really excited hearing about this because I think we get so focused on trauma as an individual experience and response, and we often forget the collective experience and responses of trauma that happen, whether it's in communities, regions, [00:14:00] states, countries.
And when we're looking at addressing systemic trauma in those ways, or historical trauma, we look at things like natural disasters, pandemics having this kind of infrastructure of what CTIPP is really at the helm of is vital and I'm really grateful to be connected to you and and also because of my work at the state level, so I live in the state of Ohio.
I'm a part of our state trauma informed collaborative, which has been in existence for about the same time as CTIPP, so about 10 years and I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about the connection between state efforts of trauma informed networks, because I know most, if not all are trying to get connected to this coalition of, that CTIPP is organizing.
But from a state level, we meet, and I'm the regional chair of our the Upper Northeast Ohio, which is the most densely populated area, because it includes Cleveland and other cities, but we're working [00:15:00] statewide around. Not necessarily policy because, politics is messy, and there's a lot of things.
But also efforts, coalition building, awareness, creating shared language throughout the state. But we're really starting to see, and I love that you talked about community of practice I lead a community of practice for trauma informed leaders, but I'm starting to see community of practice happen at the state level, and I'm grateful to be a part of work out of the Ohio Department of Health. here that's really starting to move towards community practice specifically around public health and health care initiatives to get those folks into those spaces for long term impact. And, all the things that kind of come with that. But I'm curious if you can talk a little bit, especially for those, so I have a very wide international audience.
So a lot of folks live in six different continents listen to this podcast and are a part of the community of practice that I hold. But I'm curious, a lot of folks here are in the States. So do you mind talking a little bit about the state like efforts? How would somebody maybe get involved if they want to [00:16:00] learn more from that level?
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah. And it's a great question. Awesome that you have six continents. I assume that Antarctica is the one that we've still got to reach some
Katie Kurtz (she/her): still got to reach, we're here for you. But yeah, we have a lot of folks from Europe, South America, Asia, South Asia. A lot of folks in Australia, New Zealand and of course we have Canada and Mexico.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah there's efforts there's great efforts in Australia and New Zealand. I know and all over the world that's very exciting. Yeah. So at a state level, I think more than half of all states have some level of an initiative that is working on promoting a trauma informed state.
I I love. to hear that Ohio is moving toward a community of practice, at least in, in some areas. And I know that there is legislation that's trying to move forward in Ohio as well. There's been work done in Cincinnati and elsewhere that is promoting at various levels trauma informed approaches. I think that one of the reasons that I [00:17:00] love and just want to highlight that the community of practice can be so important is, there's a great Bruce Perry quote, and I might be misattributing, but I don't think that I am, and maybe misquoting, and so not a direct quote, but the overall premise of and idea is that if trauma theory and trauma science is a mile long, we know like the first three inches. And so to, I always say that part of being trauma informed relies on an a commitment to an ongoing process of learning and growth. Because there is just so much more to learn, right? And so a lot of times what we've seen with policy is sometimes a state or community or organization will call itself trauma informed.
And it's been directly told to me that's when the work actually stops. Because we're like, we got there. And it's no, this is ongoing process, right? And so what communities of practice help us do is create [00:18:00] voice choice and empowerment. It enhances and encourages collaboration, different principles of a trauma informed approach while allowing for innovation to spur up from potentially unexpected messengers who may not reach the table or help to set the table for conversations that are often had where unexpected.
innovative practices and policies can emerge to the top and then be spread out. And so that's really exciting. State by state, you should be able to find out what is going on by Google search. It's oftentimes buried into a government website, which is not always the easiest place to navigate for short. but whether that be a trauma-informed task force Or it might be in a public health department of public health at a state level. We see so many different states that are trying to organize this. I know that Pennsylvania calls it Heal PA. Tennessee calls theirs Resilient Tennessee. And there's It's just so many [00:19:00] others.
And any of those search terms, if you don't see one of those and you can always look toward healing center to resilience as well as trauma informed. You're right. There is a higher than chance likelihood that a listener calling in from a state is going to find something, whether that be on the private side.
Out of Virginia the Stop Child Abuse Now, the scans run in collaboration with the state, but on the private side, trauma informed community networks. There's I think about three dozen tickens is what I have learned they are called, I believe. And from state to state, there are different avenues.
And then for sure, in some states, there may not be as public of a task force. And that itself creates an opportunity for advocacy as we try to move forward. But between organizations and governments, we see more often than not, a tremendous number of collaboratives taking shape and taking place to try and address a lot of the problems.
That we are facing as [00:20:00] a society.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): One thing I really appreciate Jesse that I, and maybe you could talk a little bit more about is when you talk about like the ideas lab and like the toolkits and your advisory board and all of this, it's important for folks to understand that it. that CTIPP isn't really endorsing or utilizing one specific interpretation of an approach, correct?
It's, there's so many different interpretations of trauma informed care. I know Sandra Bloom is a part of, has been a part of your organization and, there's a sanctuary model. There's this person's model. There's so many different ways to interpret trauma informed care, but at Root, we know those kind of six principles that are those guiding, Beliefs and attitudes to, to really move us forward, but you're not necessarily, taking, Bruce Perry or, Bessel and all these people like you're very neutral.
And to look at these different ways of applying and activating folks around different things, whether it's schools, older adults, [00:21:00] educate Am I'm interpreting that correctly?
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah. So we do not want to get into the business unless we were to be much larger and can do like certification, but that creates its own, like there needs to be a lot of infrastructure to be able to do that well, and not in a hierarchical and frankly, like potentially traumatizing kind of way.
We are not in the business of certifying models and our model agnostic with a small asterisk of there's definitely bad training out there, right? If someone tells you that you're trauma informed after doing a one hour certification or training on ACEs, that is not that's not it, right?
And so we we definitely believe that there's We don't want to say that everything is trauma informed there, there are, but when we're operationalizing those six principles, there's a lot of people, I believe that you do this, Katie that are doing tremendous work in really good ways, and we want to uplift, we want to be the tide that lifts all the [00:22:00] ships of getting this information out there in really meaningful ways and implement it in really good ways that actually help individuals, families, communities, organizations, and systems.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I'm so glad you said that because I say it at nauseum, especially on this podcast. So I just want folks who are listening to know that it's not just me who say that you can't be trauma informed after an hour. It's just not like how it works. And I'm also of a great I believe there's a lot of really good people doing a lot of really good work.
And I'm of the belief, however you get there is great. If that's with me in the training, I do awesome. If not, there's so many amazing colleagues doing incredible trainings across the board, but there are, it's especially now, as we see, trauma informed as this buzzword or trend, quote unquote, which we both know is. a thing, but we'll take it if we're moving forward, right? But you need to be discerning. We need to be really critically thinking about who we're training with, what the training is, and especially, as we start to see, universities all over the place are [00:23:00] offering certifications, master's degrees in trauma informed care, which is great, but also just be discerning in how you're learning, what you're learning, and who you're learning from which is so important.
So yeah, I appreciate you clarifying that at that point. Model, being model agnostic. It's a good way of putting it. Jessie, let's talk about trauma informed policy. Obviously, there's specific trauma, like you mentioned, some task forces specifically around trauma informed care. I know you and I have talked a lot about trauma informed funding and just, like, how we apply trauma informed care to funding, which, is probably going to be a whole other podcast episode.
But especially now, we have a lot of people tuning in or very attuned, given the time this, the season of life we're in right now. It's 2024. We're in election season, and we're not just in any election season. We're in a very heightened hyper vigilant dysregulated, election season.
And I'm curious if we can just start, before we go into policy, can we just name and talk [00:24:00] about how trauma is political? There's a reason I know politics, it can feel really sticky. There's a lot of feelings. There's a lot of opinions. There's a lot of lived experiences. We're not talking about red or blue or who is in this race.
But the reality that trauma itself is a political thing violence is political, harm is political, healing is political, mental health, like all of these aspects are inherently political. And I'm curious. If that's not too divisive, we can talk about that.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): No, I don't think it's divisive at all. Okay.
Trauma is a bipartisan issue, and there is support on both sides of the aisle. We're not talking about a divisive issue here. I think that it was Smelser and a group of authors that published a book back in 2004 about cultural trauma. I'm doing this off the top of my head, so again, I hope that I'm not misattributing that [00:25:00] talk about how oftentimes political messengers Are the carriers of cultural traumas because part of a cultural trauma is that it needs to live on and have that stickiness and create those feelings of shame and guilt at a very broad cultural level about specific events. And so the importance of how politics carries trauma throughout our society is key.
And that's The first session in our new CTIPPCAN format is going to be about why trauma informed approaches to advocacy are so important to help dispel just that. Because it creates this false binary that oftentimes we see such opposition and fighting from both sides against each other where most issues We actually agree on, but the dust storms that are built up to concoct the these bigger fights that really funnel huge donations [00:26:00] into politics itself as a machine and as a system is It's really problematic to where we're not talking about education funding.
We're talking about what books are in libraries and we're talking about other issues that really what we can all agree on is we need education system reform and what that looks like may look different, but if we can respect each other on either side enough to be able to have those conversations, then.
We're able to begin to move forward. And again, there is a lot more that we agree on that our children need than what we disagree on, like at a high level, it's 80 to 90 percent of the country agrees on a lot of stuff. What politics seems to do is create this sort of frustrated flurry of divisive issues that drive us further and further apart.
And that's almost like neurological warfare. [00:27:00] if you will, to where that again feeds and fuels this system of huge donations, a ton of focus, a ton of our time and attention, because it makes, that's how the system is designed to make these, and it is big, it is important. But again, if we can get down to the small p politics, the personal politics, what we want to see happen in our communities, we have seen that as we get more and more hyper local, and as we are able to move beyond the conspiracies on both sides of the aisle to be talking about what impacts us personally, we're Able to move forward a lot more quickly and a lot more closely than where we are in our election cycle that makes it sound like there's two different countries that are in one, we are, it's the opposite of a United States.
It is. Like that is very much how it is perpetuated. And that creates trauma that again, that fragmentation that I was talking about as a hallmark of [00:28:00] trauma. That's how that can very easily show up. But again, we know that the processing, the open communication, giving voice choice, empowerment, creating conditions of safety, again, leaning into how we are operationalizing trauma informed principles can be so important.
And it will take a long time because there has been harm done. Across the board. There, there is felt harm and pain from this has been in process for a very long time. Longer than I've been alive, for sure. It's not any one person's fault that this exists, right? There's so many different factors that are feeding into a growing and chasming society.
And again, those trauma informed approaches that help to deal with the cultural and systemic traumas that our political cycles have brought about are huge.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, and that's directly related to policies, right? We elect people who create [00:29:00] or don't create policies that directly impact us, which create environments or lack of resources that contribute to adverse community environments, which we know are the root causes of adverse childhood experiences.
But also. Individual, collective, and cultural impact, which can result in trauma. But also we know policies have the ability to also impact resilience and healing. And so to have a national representation with CTIPP to help inform, integrate trauma informed care into, and the conversation for starters around policymaking and policy advocacy is so key.
For the movement that we can see this connection, right? It's not just those people, it's all of us. We are, this othering that continues to happen because of our very narrow, old, outdated [00:30:00] definition of trauma that still exists, continues to keep this, again, what you're, that term you're using, fragmentation, right?
This fragmentation of it's us and them, but really it's all of us. We're all impacted by policy. We're all impacted. whether it's directly or indirectly. And we also have the ability to influence policy based on our right to vote and advocate, et cetera, and where we put our money and all of those things.
So I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about like the policy and why, you mentioned like trauma. We're a very traumatized culture right now. Our country is, has been an act of trauma since its inception, right? And so it's very, it makes, If we step, if I step back, it makes a lot of sense for where we're at right now.
I'm not saying it's okay. And this is like a hallmark of trauma informed care. We can understand why someone does something. We, doesn't mean we're endorsing it or saying it's okay, but we can understand why it's happening. And when we zoom out from the United [00:31:00] States I can see where, how we've hit this really heightened sense of just trauma responses and dysregulation and harm flying about. all over the place. And now more than ever, not to sound, cliche, it's Now more than ever, I feel like trauma informed care is, it needs to be the expectation, not the exception. This should be everywhere. And it's starting, I'm slowly starting to see it become more mainstream. We have a long way to go, but I'm curious if you can speak to that.
Why it's so dire for us to have trauma informed care, especially, in how we advocate and how we talk and how we you know, discuss it at this federal level while simultaneously understanding that we're living in this cultural and historical trauma ourselves.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah I think that, it's a great question, Katie.
I'll just highlight that we have a few resources that highlight different annual reports on how policy has moved forward and just highlight that we see [00:32:00] more and more policies across all states aligning with a trauma informed model over the last Seven years, I think this has been being tracked by it's we've done a couple of reports in collaboration with the University at Buffalo's Institute on trauma and trauma informed care.
And, they've been tracking policy for. Several years now we continue to see this growing. I think that why it is so important is because we find ourselves, and policy can be implemented at the federal state local tribal level, you can see organizational policies. And I'll speak to federal mostly, but just know that this can impact different.
Different levels of society, if you will as well, if you look at the social ecological framework, and that's important because again, we talked about how trauma is oftentimes seen as an individual issue. But when we understand that trauma can impact society, we see how traumatized systems promote stress and [00:33:00] adversity that then disproportionately impact already marginalized individuals, families, and communities that create the predictable outcomes that we are trying to solve in the 1st place.
And we are now in a society that is 35 trillion in debt, which again, I just to magnify what that number means. And I don't mean to speak down at all, but just like the magnitude. Of that number is that a trillion is a million millions, and we have 35 million millions of dollars in debt that continue to compound and drive us further into debt, what drives that the greatest.
driver of our current debt is actually medicare and medicaid and that is not to say that we should not be investing in medicare and medicaid a lot of the costs that wind up being associated is because we do not do enough investment in the prevention side and in early care and treatment we [00:34:00] wait So far, but we know that what trauma informed approaches would do across the long term is to reduce a lot of the costs that are burdening our society.
We know that we know enough. We may not know everything again. We need to continue to be curious, but we know enough to move forward to be able to meet people in better ways to drive healthier and better outcomes at a social, at an individual, at a family, at a community level. We know this. We have seen it work in action to where Washington State through their Family Policy Council created more than 1 billion in cost avoidance through community led initiatives that can then be paid off, and we would also see reductions in justice system costs.
We would see more tax benefits when we have a workforce that isn't so burnt out and that is able to stay in space. Over time, you would see special education system costs come down. All of these different costs, not just Medicare and Medicaid, but so [00:35:00] many different costs that essentially the government has to pay for.
Over time, we can pay off by moving upstream and meeting the deeper needs that we all have as human beings because I think that the trauma informed movement is really just becoming more human with ourselves and with each other, and that we can actually like it's not just the right thing to do. We have seen so often that the moral argument Is a is sometimes not enough to move policy forward, right?
And I don't think that we should ever move away from undoubtedly in my mind. This is the right thing to do Also, it's economically the right thing to do We are in a system that is at a crisis level and the more that we are able to invest upstream in what promotes healthier More productive and stronger individuals families and communities and society as a whole is going to make all of us better You And so when we were talking about trauma informed policies, again, there are so many different ways that we can apply a [00:36:00] trauma informed lens to policymaking.
But as we move forward toward this, it's going to create a stronger society, it's going to create a stronger economy, and it's going to allow for us to continue to innovate and move forward and find ways toward a better future for all of us.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): It just makes sense. This, oh, Jesse, okay, you're speaking to something that is applicable to every level, right?
Whether you're talking one on one with the CEO or a director of a department or a policymaker or just your neighbor, to explain what trauma informed care is, it can feel complicated. And I know you and I have had many conversations in the past around just the term trauma informed care and how, that can immediately stop someone in their tracks.
And also, finding, you do such a great job of finding ways to invite people into that curiosity, not just from Being from a [00:37:00] human standpoint, like this is the right thing to do. That's important, but we need that other tangible side, right? What is this if you will, return on investment? What are the, those kind of tangible outcomes that trauma informed has?
And although I hope that we start to see more funding and research around the implementation and integration of trauma informed care and the impact of that. We know though that when trust and safety are built and focused on that people will feel more engaged and safe and to engage, which means the likely you know, show up more to whatever that may be, which means the outcomes will be better.
And I think that's true of a hospital system and a corporation and a factory and a school and, the White House. So I'm curious, how do you Because you're working at a high level and you're working in politics. So no better place are you seeing the, the jargon, right? [00:38:00] There's so much jargon, the acronyms, right?
You're high level talking with people who make really big decisions, and you don't have a lot of time, right? You probably have a very few seconds at a dinner or an event to talk to people to get them hooked to understand this concept. How do you talk to people, especially policymakers, elected officials, decision makers, about this approach to continue that conversation, that foot in the door, that the way of discussing this because I think this is so relatable to those of us who are in other spaces, whether it's getting our boss to, to take this seriously, maybe bring in a training on trauma informed care or get, our school to, to look at, teachers to get more support, whatever it may be, can give us some tools to, or language even to consider if we want to start bringing these conversations into other levels of impact.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah, I think that I'm going to use a framework by a gentleman named Marshall Ganz, who developed this framework of story of self story [00:39:00] of us story of now and one of the places that I think we oftentimes go. Understandably is data first and that misses like the hearts and minds of people because no matter what level you're advocating at because five years ago I was at a community center in Philadelphia as the director of development and was advocating for a trauma informed program at the community center to the executive director and yesterday I was in the White House talking to the lead of or the Eisenhower building White House staff who work for the president, essentially, talking about the importance of trauma informed care.
And at every level of that, you're talking to a human being. Right? And I think that's really important for us to remember. That to capture the hearts and minds. Like, when I advocate, I start with my own story. And why this is important to me. Granted, I always assume that I have three to five minutes.
I have spoken to you and your podcast listeners in six continents, which is awesome. Awesome. For much longer about my [00:40:00] story than I would in an advocacy pitch because you want to keep that short and concise because you want for them to give back to you as well. So that way, again, you're building that relationship, but you start with your story and why this is important to you.
And then the story of us, where you see what. Is applied to you. So for me, just to speak it into example, like my intro into trauma informed care before I ever knew about the terms of trauma or trauma informed care was when I was in my teens, I went through an eating disorder because I choked on a piece of food and had vicious anxiety attacks that led me to not eat.
I survived off in shore for four months. And what was happening is that I was essentially in a deeper brain state. I was always in fight flight freeze because I was. terrified for my life. And a couple of years after that, my best friend tragically passed away in a plane crash and I needed to be supported by a broader community to be able to move forward for a decent [00:41:00] amount of my most formative years because these bigger questions about life and What the purpose of everything that I was experiencing was came flooding in at me right as trauma can so often do it makes us freeze and question these huge things that have happened to us.
And then the story of us would be My first job out of college was working in a public high school in the city of Philadelphia, where I saw that so many more kids had experienced so much more adversity than I had with so far fewer supports. It was so difficult. For me to move forward. And I was working with, there was one student who lived below the poverty line and had lost three friends to gun violence in the city in just the year that I was working in the school.
This is pervasive throughout our society. Trauma is prevalent and the stress that it causes. And we know that with the right supports and resources, we can [00:42:00] develop post traumatic growth and post traumatic wisdom that allow for us to not just bounce back in that technical physics term of resilience, but actually transform and grow stronger through the stress and adversity that we've experienced.
But we need those supports because if we don't have that, then it can just crush us. And we see that all throughout our society, which gets us into the story of now, which 35 trillion dollars in debt get into, the number of overdose deaths, which is still over 100, 000 people a year, the deaths related to other social determinants of health and the I miss it, the deaths of despair that exists throughout our society so prevalently, and we know that we can, like we were saying earlier, move toward a better system that is helping to weave the social fabric, create the community connections that build the relationships that promote healing because we know that healing happens in the context of [00:43:00] healthy relationships over time.
And in a three to five minute span, I don't know how long I just went on for. You orient around a specific purpose, right? Why is this important? There's Sinek called the golden circle, and it talks about leading with why, and then we can get into. And this policy is going to help move this forward in this way.
This is the agency directive that would help communities better organize to be able to do x, y, or z. Right? And so never forget that we're just talking with individuals and humans and connecting at that level. And that story of self, story of us, story of now framework, which we have worksheets on our website to help people to develop, can be organized to create a very effective advocacy pitch.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, thanks so much, Jesse. That's so helpful and I think relatable. And I appreciate you sharing just your own example of how you move through that. Because I think that's relatable to any of us, [00:44:00] whether explaining how we provide trauma informed care, or how we provide trauma informed care. Just in our services or business to a potential client, to our boss, to our team, to our physician, literally anyone whether it's, like you said, at the White House or at the community center, it's, trauma informed care belongs everywhere, and we're all capable of providing this kind of care if we choose it.
And I think we need to help people as advocates of creating, co creating a trauma informed future. We have this responsibility to make sure people know what their choice is, and that choice is available, and that we have this choice to be more human together towards ourselves and others, and that there are these really tangible ways and outcomes when we do this, when we choose this path.
I have one more question before we wrap up. close out. I feel like I might have to invite you back quarterly. Just start at least a few more times, just to have an update from the Hill of what's going on. [00:45:00] But, politics is messy and trauma informed care is a long game.
And especially when we are so passionate and we see so clearly why this Not just why this is important, but how the impact it can have and it not happening fast enough. I'm a very impatient person and I couldn't, I don't know if I could do what you do. I would get so fired up and so impatient and just want to shake people.
So I'm curious how you maintain hope in this long game. How are you holding on or anchoring to your own practice and trauma informed self care to keep going and doing this really important work that we're all benefiting from.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah, don't give me too much credit here, Katie. I, too, am impatient and I appreciate that very much, but I believe that again, navigating legislation and like what committees are like the right places to go like that takes some knowledge, but I think that any anybody can [00:46:00] advocate.
I genuinely believe that at the bottom of my heart. And, when times are hardest when going back to the 15 year old me a really important point was after. Doug passed away. I struggled to move forward at all, and I didn't know if I could genuinely, and then I had a particular experience when I was at, just the deepest of deep, and it's happened a few times since as I was growing up, where I knew that I couldn't give up.
I just it I didn't have it in me, and so if I were going to continue, I was just going to move through and create the change that I felt was so important in the world and at the hardest moments and I think that so many people at various levels have through Some version of that mantra that exists, there was a great Alonzo Mourning quote who was a basketball player, and I think was battling cancer at one point, and he said [00:47:00] pain is temporary, quitting is forever.
There's a great Randy Pausch quote, who wrote the last lecture that goes Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. And, at the hardest times I will wake up tired sometimes, but I always tell myself today could be the day that everything changes, right? And I've just, it's been thousands of days at this point of I've been in this role for more than a thousand days, believing that today could be the day that we get a million dollars that allows for us to, go on.
And through the frustration that, that grounds me in. understanding how lucky I've been to receive the opportunities that I have in my life, and believing that luck shouldn't be part of the equation that allows for someone to reach their full potential, and believing with all of my heart and being that the work that we do is critical in getting to a society where we aren't just a lucky sum that are able to Live out at least parts of our dreams that [00:48:00] it's something that is provided to all of us and, then makes our society stronger and all of that, that it's actually a scalable and sustainable model much more than what we're currently operationalizing.
And through the frustrations, I. I cry. I scream. I have gotten more into healthy practices of I started boxing. Not in a ring. I've had too many concussions to risk getting hit in the head too hard. But, finding your outlet. I am not an artistic person, unfortunately.
I wish that I could paint and create beautiful images. Elicit my emotions in visible ways. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, but physical activity has been huge. As an outlet for me. But it is frustrating. And I what we do should have happened like a lot of times I like when people ask me when this needs to happen.
I'm like it needed to happen yesterday. And the reality is it needed to happen hundreds of years ago. But remaining present and grounded in the moment in which we are in and working with [00:49:00] trying to center myself in my cortex and create a future orientation as best as I can, how can we move forward from today toward a better future?
And when things are going well and I have a lot of energy it's a lot easier to do that. But. All the time I find myself grounded from my childhood experiences, as I think we all do, and what brings me purpose and passion in the world, and that has continued to drum up enough hope to move forward and hopefully provide others with the same, because also I just generate so much hope to continue in this work every time that I talk to somebody who's got enough hope to continue it within their own locus of control and knowing that we're all part of the same team, pushing the same movement forward toward a better world for everybody.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. Thanks, Jesse. I share that hope with you and One reason this podcast exists is just [00:50:00] to hear from people and who are doing the work that are showing up every day and just in it and choosing this approach and moving and advocating it forward. I think for anyone who's willing to become trauma informed and use this approach, you are in and of itself an advocate because you're mirroring this for others of what could be possible when we apply this priority and hope is as a part of it.
And. Building our capacity to stay with it is so important. I really appreciate this conversation. I'm definitely going to link all the things you discussed today with CTIPP and ways people can, read those annual reviews to really see the impact of policy happening here, as well as ways to get involved with C tip can and press on and in the ideas lab.
Before we go into the gentle spritz, remind people that, Trauma informed care is political and it's a thing we have this ability to activate our choice, not just during election [00:51:00] seasons, but every day.
And there are great resources available to you to learn more about trauma informed policy and practices at a, at, a national, state, local level. So be sure to to know that you're not alone. And if this is a guiding principle for you and how you engage, please be sure to connect with CTIPP and your state affiliations and collaboratives.
All right, Jessie. So if you could describe trauma informed care in one word, it's okay if you have one more than one, what would it be?
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Love..
Katie Kurtz (she/her): What is your current go to for nervous system care? I know you shared a little bit about this, but.
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Boxing, boxing earlier. I've started to grill. I can only grill one dish.
I make a grilled chicken with grilled veggies that, that I do well and that's about it. But I do enjoy that very much. Reading has become more and more enjoyable. for me. And then I love golf. I love baseball. I'm a big sports guy. And then spending time with my family [00:52:00] the love of my life, my friends, just getting to be with other people has been very good for my nervous system.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Love it. And what does a trauma informed future look like for you?
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Way better. I think when we start to invest in cost avoidance to systems through a trauma informed lens that then allows for communities to have sustained infrastructure and funding that allows for them to innovate and learn from other communities or states.
We're countries and a world as a whole that is learning from what is working, what isn't working, and moving forward together instead of being competitive, but collaborative as we invest in creating a future that is not just better for everybody, but also creating a sustainable planet that we can, that, that future generations can live in.
Thrive on not just surviving, but truly thriving, which I think the humanity if it ever did it, it hasn't been for a long time getting into that place. And again, I have [00:53:00] so much vision written out that I will just keep it there. But if anybody's interested, we can talk for a lot longer about that.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thanks so much, Jesse, for being here and generously sharing your time. What is a good way, beside the CTIPP, any other good ways for folks to connect with you and your work?
Jesse Kohler (he/him): Yeah, through CTIPP's whether it's CTIPP. org, CTIPPp. org, we have LinkedIn, Facebook. YouTube, I think other social media platforms, but those are definitely the big ones I, my, my email is Jesse at CTIPP.
org. If anybody has questions or wants to reach out, please get involved. I would love to see you all on the CTIPP CAN calls in our climate community of practice. If you are engaged in a community coalition. And again, I hope to be back very soon to discuss further.
