Healing Through Justice
A Youth-led Breakthrough Strategy For Healing-Centered Communities
The Healing Through Justice model receives global recognition for its impact on community healing through holistic social justice engagement.
At a time when we are facing a national youth mental health crisis, Chicago youth are leading a first-of-its kind partnership between Communities United and Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago to advance youth-led solutions that promote community healing.
Our resources help to support CU's partnership with Lurie Children's to advance “Healing Through Justice: A Community-led Breakthrough Strategy for Healing Centered Communities.”
Our work validates the positive effect that community organizing and action have on issues around mental health and wellness within Black and brown communities.
What is the Healing Through Justice Initiative?
Over the past 10 years, Communities United developed the Healing Through Justice (HTJ) model: a novel, community-led, youth leadership and trauma recovery strategy. Healing Through Justice is a transformative, asset-based approach to youth engagement, through which young people develop their leadership and are empowered to lead civic action initiatives that address issues impacting themselves, their families, and communities. It is a model for community healing informed by the narratives of hundreds of participating young people who have described improvements in mental wellbeing and healing from trauma while taking social action to address issues impacting them and their families – a model through which youth heal themselves while working to heal their communities.
Through this model, CU engages young people of color who conduct youth-led research, build alliances, and lead strategies and advocacy campaigns that are grounded in their lived experiences.
In partnership with John Walkup, MD, Chair, Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Lurie Children’s Hospital, the Healing Through Justice model has emerged as a promising model to create breakthroughs in the field of youth development and mental health. Communities United and Lurie Children’s have embarked on an 8-year path to document, evaluate, and disseminate new youth-led strategies, and their engagement with systems, to address deep-rooted challenges facing youth of color across our city.
Our Progress
+ Released Youth-led Research Report- Breaking The Beat on Mental Health
+ Youth efforts shifted $10 million from policing in schools toward healing-centered approaches to school safety in Chicago Public Schools
+ Youth-led policy implementation to address substance use in schools through health and mental health approaches
+ Leading narrative change efforts to center youth leadership to address mental health in Chicago
+ Youth participate in helping shape the vision of the Austin HOPE Center, a new health hub in Chicago’s westside
+ Responding to youth-led research, Lurie Children’s Hospital launches
Read what some of our youth have shared about what HTJ means to them
"The work that I have done with CU has been healing because it’s allowed me to become more self confident and help people around me."
"I think healing internally looks like learning how to hope or manage something until you are strong enough to face it and overcome it."
"It’s very exciting to know that our work is being recognized, especially at this moment when we are seeing a lot of need for healing in our communities. Being part of the work to create change in my community has helped me in my healing journey, and I have witnessed the same effect on my friends. We are ready to continue to grow our work and engage institutions on how they can support our vision for healing in our communities."
RECENT MEDIA
CHICAGO TRIBUNE - 2024
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A Call for City-Wide investment in Youth Mental Health Services and Community Resources
For decades, young people across the nation have struggled with mental health battles with little to no support or understanding from adults. In response, Communities United Youth Leader wrote an empowering piece in conversation with Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Dr. John Walkup calling on adult allies to support youths by investing in mental health services and community resources.
