Results Focused
GETTING TO THE ROOTS — FOCUSING RESOURCES ON WHAT WORKS
When people experience physical or psychological injuries, they may rely on healthcare systems, workplace insurance, employee benefits and other resources to help them access treatment, recover and rebuild their lives.
These systems provide important services, but not every person or family will find everything they need within a single system, treatment or approach.
Gaps may exist in access, funding, coordination, prevention, early intervention and the range of supports available. People can also have very different needs depending on their experiences, health, family circumstances and the nature of their injuries.
The New Hope Community believes we need to look beyond simply responding after someone becomes injured.
We also need to better understand what factors may contribute to operational stress injuries, what helps people recover, and what can be changed to reduce the risk of injuries occurring or becoming more serious in the first place.
That means bringing together clinical expertise, lived experience, family perspectives, peer support, research, education and complementary approaches while also examining workplace environments, organizational practices and the broader systems that affect frontline personnel.
We believe decisions about resources and funding should increasingly be informed by evidence, measurable outcomes, lived experience and the perspectives of the people and families those systems are intended to serve.
Where existing approaches are producing meaningful results, we should learn from them and strengthen them.
Where gaps exist, we should identify them.
Where promising approaches require further evidence, we should be willing to study them.
Research will be an important part of that process. We envision working with qualified and independent researchers to establish meaningful baseline information, evaluate different approaches and follow outcomes over time to better understand what works, for whom, and under what circumstances.
The purpose of that research should not be to prove a predetermined conclusion. It should be to discover what the evidence tells us—even when the answer challenges what we expected.
Ultimately, New Hope wants to help move the conversation from simply responding to injury toward a more comprehensive approach that includes prevention, early intervention, healing, long-term recovery and addressing the factors that may contribute to operational stress injuries.
If we want better outcomes, we have to be willing to understand the problem from the roots up.