This week experts gathered in Milwaukee from all over the world. Around 1,400 people examined ways and shared research to fight trauma in children and adults.
It's all part of the "Healing Trauma, Healthy Communities" Conference. Franklin Cumberbatch a Vice President of Bader Philanthropies and Tim Grove, Chief Clinical Officer of St.A took part in the event.
"This comes down to you and me. One person, meeting somebody they don't know and trying to find out what happened to them," Cumberbatch said.
"Make no mistake part of this movement is about finding a connection to each other again," Grove added.
Trauma can come from a host of challenges-- like living in a home with a drug addict, alcoholic, enduring physical, sexual, or mental abuse, or having a parent in prison. The conference also addressed historical trauma like racism.
"The isms are very real in Milwaukee in terms of racism on the individual level, in terms of the institutional level adversity, relational poverty, material poverty, these are all real challenges," Grove said.
Research has show childhood trauma can physically alter a persons brain and body.
"Some of our medical colleagues are showing that under the right circumstances you can literally alter someone's bone marrow in a negative way by overwhelming exposure of stress," Grove said.
The event is a collaboration between S.W.I.M or Scaling Wellness in Milwaukee and ST.A. Cumberbatch and Grove are on the SWIM steering committee. Cumberbatch is now looking ahead to the next step.
"What I would like to see is that this momentum continues. By tomorrow there will be a lot of energy. But if on Monday we go back to the same old thing, we didn't do anything from Wednesday to Friday," Cumberbatch said.
