Coming up on August 3rd at 1 p.m. ET, join an OPEN MINDS Circle for a one-hour live presentation with Nicole Powasnick, Chief Nursing Officer of RWJBarnabas Health (RWJBH) Behavioral Health Center and Vice President of Clinical Operations for the Behavioral Health Service Line at RWJBarnabas Health, and John Engel, Director of the Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) of Klingberg Family Centers.
They will share how their organizations partnered to implement the Risking Connection Change Model (RCCM) – an 18-to-24-month roadmap for total organizational transformation – across behavioral health units and emergency departments at eight RWJBH sites, including data to illustrate its impact.
Get a sneak preview through this excerpt from a May webinar at TSI, which also included input from other RWJBarnabas Health staff about their experiences of the implementation, its impact on both staff and patients, and the fundamental shift in their workplace culture.
Rather than approaching trauma-informed care as a one-time training, RWJBH and TSI treated implementation as an organization-wide commitment. The result was a more consistent framework for supporting both staff and patients in high-pressure care environments.
The Risking Connection Change Model offers a structured path for organizations that want to move beyond isolated initiatives and toward long-term, sustainable transformation. Across participating sites, the model helped create a shared language around trauma, strengthen staff confidence, and support a more regulated, responsive workplace culture. For behavioral health and emergency department teams, that kind of alignment matters. When staff understand how trauma affects behavior, decision-making, and relationships, they are better equipped to respond with empathy, clarity, and accountability.
The webinar excerpt also highlights an important truth about systems change: meaningful outcomes depend on supporting the workforce as much as the people they serve. As organizations face burnout, turnover, and increasing clinical complexity, trauma-informed implementation can become a powerful strategy for improving staff well-being while also strengthening patient care. In this preview, staff from RWJBarnabas Health reflect on what it took to build momentum, what changed in their daily practice, and why long-term investment in culture can lead to measurable impact.
Whether you are leading a hospital-based behavioral health program, overseeing staff development, or exploring trauma-informed change across service systems, this webinar will offer valuable insight into what implementation looks like in practice. It is an opportunity to learn from a real-world partnership, hear lessons from the field, and consider how a whole-system approach can support safer, more connected care. Register Here.