Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS)

Joyce Dorado, Ph.D. and Miriam Martinez, Ph.D. co-founded the Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS) Program in 2008, in close collaboration with San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) personnel. Prior to the inception of HEARTS, through their experiences working in schools, they learned that providing onsite, trauma-specific treatment was not enough to truly address the needs of trauma-impacted students. While providing evidence-based interventions for the students at the school was effective in building their coping skills in the therapy room, too often students were returning to their classrooms only to be inadvertently triggered into survival mode by stressors in the school environment such as a sudden change in classroom routine, a challenging interaction with another student, or a disciplinary practice that the student perceived as a threat. They also bore witness to the extremely high level of chronic stress experienced by school staff. The anecdotal evidence began to mount for a different kind of approach. 

HEARTS is a whole-school, prevention and intervention approach that utilizes a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) framework to address trauma and chronic stress at the student level, staff level, and school organizational level. HEARTS is guided by six core principles that are grounded in extensive research on trauma-interventions and trauma-informed systems, modified for educational settings. 

HEARTS partnered with Heart Core Consulting in 2023 to expand the reach of the HEARTS program and approach beyond grant-driven funding models to schools and districts nation-wide.