In 2018, the PATF formed a City Council Hearing Coordinating Committee to work on bringing the topic of Secondary Traumatic Stress before the Philadelphia City Council. Committee members included Betty Lee Davis, Sandhyaa Iyengar, and Lian Liu, Sadie Mahmoud, Meghana Sharma, and Carolyn Smith-Brown. The Committee engaged panelists from a variety of disciplines and with various lived experiences to prepare testimonies for a hearing before the Philadelphia City Council. The informational hearing took place in December, 2018. Committee members also curated a resource guide for City Council.
The panelists who provided testimony for the hearing:
Vic Compher, CAREgivers film
Betty Lee Davis, clinician
Dr. Sandra Bloom, founder of the Sanctuary Model and professor at Drexel University
Cynthia Figueroa, DHS Commissioner
Barbara Rahke, Director of PhilaPOSH
Ethelind Baylor, President of DC-47
Leslie Lieberman, MSW, Senior Director of Special Initiatives and Consulting at The Health Federation of Philadelphia
Dr. Sandhyaa Iyengar, Pediatrician
Moving forward, the PATF will continue to meet to search for and develop opportunity to advance cross-sector and community engagement around secondary traumatic stress.
For a copy of the Committee’s resource packet, click here
For an article on the hearing, click here