Our History

Joyce Dorado, Ph.D. and Miriam Martinez, Ph.D. co-founded the Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS) Program in December, 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. The HEARTS mission began to shift just as their home clinic was invited by the SFUSD Superintendent to help the district address trauma in their schools. The Superintendent ultimately decided that addressing trauma in schools needed to be a priority in SFUSD’s strategic plan that among other goals explicitly worked to address the achievement gap between students of color and other students. In their search for whole-school, systemic interventions to address trauma, they came upon the flexible framework put forth by Massachusetts Advocates for Children and the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) (Cole, et a., 2005).  The TLPI draws from complex trauma theory and research as well as resilience research, and provides a framework for creating more trauma-sensitive school environments that foster not only individual change and healing, but school-wide change and healing. Inspired by this framework, they began to build upon they experiences in schools, and reworked they approach to addressing trauma in schools through a multi-level, whole-school approach. Through the generous support of various foundations including The Metta Fund, HEARTS was created.

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. 

Since 2008, HEARTS has operated a full, site-based program model (HEARTS Full) as well as a flexible program model (HEARTS Flex). HEARTS Full includes a HEARTS consultant on-site at a school 3-5 days per week, collaborating with school leadership and staff around providing the full range of supports and services across all three MTSS tiers. Services include training and consultation to school site and district staff and onsite psychotherapy for trauma-impacted students. HEARTS Flex focuses on primary prevention (tier 1) and early/secondary (tier 2) intervention, without direct therapeutic services for students. These supports involve a HEARTS consultant/trainer who provides capacity-building consultation and training to school site staff or district central office staff ranging from once monthly to twice weekly. Frequency of training and consultation depends upon needs and resources of a school site or district.

To date, HEARTS has partnered with three large school districts and 38 elementary, middle, and high schools serving under-resourced, trauma-impacted communities in Northern California, including San Francisco, Oakland, San Mateo, Marin, Elk Grove, Humboldt, and Sacramento through generous funding from public and private grants, including the Department of Education, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

doc Martha, Co-Founder of Heart Core Consulting, conducted her post-doc training with Dr. Dorado, and was the lead HEARTS trainer starting in 2012. Dr. Stephanie Guinosso, the other Co-Founder of Heart Core Consulting, first partnered with HEARTS in 2017 while working at the California School-Based Health Alliance to strengthen trauma-informed school systems for school-based health centers in Oakland and West Contra Costa Unified School Districts. These partnerships continued to flourish over the years, and in 2023, Heart Core Consulting was born to expand the reach of the HEARTS program and approach beyond grant-driven funding models to schools and districts nation-wide.