Building Resilient Communities in the State of Oregon
May 6, 2024
Hosted by Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Shannon Biteng of the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) is the Trauma Informed Organization Manager. She will share the development and implementation of the ODHS Trauma Aware Program. The program supports over 12,000 human services professionals dedicated to assisting 1.5 million Oregonians in accessing essential resources and enhancing their overall well-being. She will share how the Trauma Aware initiatives foster resilience, promote well-being, and strive to empower individuals affected by trauma and toxic stress. The Trauma Aware Program actively contributes to ODHS's mission of becoming a Trauma-Informed Organization by fostering supportive interactions at both individual and systemic levels, focusing on equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Their approach integrates evidence-based practices with the insights gleaned from the experiences of their workforce and the communities they serve. She will discuss an array of programs, which includes Trauma-Informed Practice, Resilience, Healing and Empowerment, Trauma Response Services, Employee well-being, Suicide Prevention, Intervention and Postvention, and the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) program.
Resiliency Within
Monday at 1 PM Pacific Time on VoiceAmerica Health and Wellness Channel
Elaine Miller-Karas will amplify the message of hope, healing and resiliency she has learned from our world community as she has traversed the globe after human made and natural disasters. Hope often springs forth in response to suffering and trauma. Our beliefs and our wellbeing are being challenged during these unprecedented times.
The program Resiliency Within is about cultivating individual and community resiliency. Resiliency is the capacity to lean into our strengths with compassion during the most challenging of times and to remember "what else is true?" about our lived experience.
Her guests are inspiring global leaders actively promoting healing and resiliency from a variety of backgrounds. The goal is to spread wellbeing and give individual and community examples to inspire how wellness skills, including ones based upon neuroscience and the biology of the human nervous system, can be integrated into one's life, family and community during challenging times.
Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW
Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW, has been called an "ambassador of hope" and a "resilience guru." She is an author, advocate, a social worker, a trauma therapist, a co-founder of an international organization, the Trauma Resource Institute and key developer of the Community and Trauma Resiliency Models.
She is the author of “Building Resiliency to Trauma, the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models(r)” (2015). She is committed to bringing accessible and affordable interventions based on neuroscience and the biology of the human nervous system to our world's community. Her models have been introduced to over 102 countries.
Elaine is a recognized international speaker and has presented at the Skoll World Forum at Oxford University and the United Nations. Her book was selected by the United Nations curated on-line library as one of the innovations that can help meet its Sustainable Development Goals.
Elaine feels passionately about the impact of climate change on our world community. She is a founding member of the International Transformational Resilience Coalition, an organization focused on the impact of climate change on mental health. She is dedicated to the world's children and she has worked with collaborators to develop interventions for children, parents and teachers to help reduce the impact of trauma. Consequently, she is a Senior Consultant to Emory University’s SEE Learning program, inspired and launched by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2019.