Healing-Centered Care: How Trauma-Informed Approaches Protect Patients, Providers, and CommunitiesHealing-Centered Care: How Trauma-Informed Approaches Protect Patients, Providers, and Communities
Healthy YOU!
The effects of trauma can linger long after a traumatic event, impacting a person's physical, emotional, and mental well-being. So how can healthcare providers, communities, and support systems help survivors move from trauma toward healing? In this episode of the Healthy YOU podcast, host Frankye Myers sits down with Neisha Himes, Trauma Liaison Coordinator for Riverside's Hand in Hand Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program, to explore the transformative power of trauma-informed care. Together, they discuss how compassionate, personalized support and community resources can help survivors of intentional violence heal, reduce the risk of re-traumatization, and build a path toward lasting recovery. Tune in for an insightful conversation about resilience, understanding, and the importance of meeting people where they are on their healing journey.
32:05•21 Sept 2026
You Deserve to Heal: Trauma-Informed Care That Changes Lives
Episode Overview
- Trauma is defined more by its impact than the event itself, and can affect health and behaviour many years later.
- Trauma-informed care is about understanding trauma, trauma-responsive care is acting on that knowledge, and healing-centred care focuses on seeing people beyond their worst moments.
- Hand in Hand provides up to a year of support, including case management, trauma therapy and peer mentoring for survivors of intentional violence.
- Healthcare staff benefit from education on compassion fatigue, burnout and vicarious trauma, helping them recognise their own needs and take restorative breaks.
- Everyday people can foster healing-centred communities by being curious rather than judgemental, showing empathy, and remembering that "you deserve to heal."
“Whether you're drowning in two feet of water or 20 feet of water, you're still drowning.”
Gain insights from experts and survivors on how trauma shapes health, behaviour, and community life in this episode of Healthy YOU!. The focus here is on intentional violence and its ripple effects, with trauma liaison educator Neisha Himes breaking things down in clear, everyday language that makes complex ideas feel manageable.
Neisha explains that trauma is "less about the event itself and more about the impact," whether that’s gun violence, domestic abuse, workplace violence, or childhood experiences that still affect someone decades later. She walks through the difference between trauma-informed, trauma-responsive, and healing-centred care in a way you’ll remember: "Trauma-informed is what you know. Trauma responsive is what you do with what you know.
And healing-centered is how you help those people along the way." The conversation highlights Riverside’s Hand in Hand hospital-based violence intervention programme, which offers up to a year of case management, bedside support, trauma therapy, and peer support – including a gun violence survivor who acts like a "big brother" to patients. Neisha also talks about her staff-facing role, supporting providers with training on compassion fatigue, burnout, vicarious trauma, and the cost of caring.
You’ll hear relatable stories about childhood messages like "boys don’t cry," near-drowning incidents, and family patterns that teach people to "function in dysfunction" – all used to show how early experiences can shape health, relationships, and work life.
The episode also gently calls out the habit of putting yourself last, with Neisha’s memorable reminder that "whether you're drowning in two feet of water or 20 feet of water, you're still drowning." Ideal for healthcare workers, caregivers, and anyone curious about how trauma-informed approaches protect patients and providers, this conversation offers practical language, real examples, and a clear message: you deserve to heal.
How might your own story be shaping the way you show up for yourself and others today?
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