Dr. Sandra L. Bloom is a Board-Certified psychiatrist, graduate of Temple University School of Medicine and currently Associate Professor, Health Management and Policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University. She is also the Founder of Creating Presence, an online organizational approach for creating trauma-informed systems.
In extending her work to include an online delivery program for Leaders, Clinicians, Direct Service Staff, and Indirect Service Staff called Creating Presence, Dr. Bloom hopes to make the innovative approach to service delivery known as “trauma-informed” and “trauma-responsive” more available and cost effective.
From 1980-2001, Dr. Bloom served as Founder and Executive Director of the Sanctuary programs, inpatient psychiatric programs for the treatment of trauma-related emotional disorders and during those years was also President of the Alliance for Creative Development, a multidisciplinary outpatient practice group. Dr. Bloom is recognized nationally and internationally as the founder of the Sanctuary Model.
Between 2005 and 2016 over 350 social service, juvenile justice and mental health organizations were trained in the Sanctuary Model.
Dr. Bloom is a Past-President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and author or co-author of a series of books on trauma-informed care: Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies published in 1997 with a second edition in 2013; Destroying Sanctuary: The Crisis in Human Delivery Service Systems published by Oxford University Press in 2010 and Restoring Sanctuary: A New Operating System for Trauma-Informed Systems of Care, published by Oxford University Press in 2013.
She is currently co-chairing a new national organization, CTIPP – The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice whose goal is to advocate for public policies and programs at the federal, state, local and tribal levels that incorporate up-to-date scientific findings regarding the relationship between trauma across the lifespan and many social and health problems.
Since 2012, Dr. Bloom has also served as Co-chair for the Philadelphia ACEs Task Force.(Edit)