Strengthening Trauma Recovery Centers Nationwide Through Evidence, Evaluation, and Tools

Being the survivor of violent crime comes with profound and lasting physical, emotional, and financial harms. Trauma Recovery Centers (TRCs) were created in California in the early 2000s to help crime survivors heal in ways that traditional victim services programs could not. 

Often based in hospitals or community organizations, TRCs provide a range of services while helping crime survivors focus on their mental health and psychosocial needs. Services can include therapy, legal and medical advocacy, and assistance accessing benefits such as housing and employment. 

The pioneering center at the University of California, San Francisco developed an evidence-based model, including assertive outreach, coordinated case management, and clinical mental health care, all tailored to reach clients whose traumatic experiences might make it harder for them to engage. From California, the TRC concept spread to other states with support from the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers (NATRC). 

As the TRC model has expanded rapidly across 18 states, policymakers, funders, and practitioners have increasingly asked a critical question: How do we ensure TRCs are implemented with fidelity, and supported with tools that reflect both the evidence and the realities of practice and the communities where they are located? 

The UCSF TRC model of care is widely viewed as a promising, evidence-based approach. The replication of the TRC model of care is at a stage in its development where to ensure continued replication to model fidelity, shared frameworks and practical evaluation tools are needed. These tools will strengthen the TRC model’s ability to demonstrate impact and support continuous improvement as replication continues.  

RTI International is working alongside the NATRC, local TRC programs, and state agencies to help build evaluation tools to strengthen the TRC’s sustainability and capacity to scale their impact. Through a coordinated portfolio of projects, RTI supports TRCs by developing customizable logic models and fidelity assessment tools, strengthening data collection practices, conducting evaluations, and translating findings and best practices into actionable resources. 

Rather than treating evaluation as a one-size-fits-all exercise, RTI’s work is grounded in collaboration with TRC leaders, clinicians, survivors, and technical assistance providers. This helps ensure that the approach and results are feasible, meaningful, and aligned with the TRC model. 

One cornerstone of this work was RTI’s collaboration with NATRC to develop a standardized TRC logic model that can be customized based on TRC’s specific activities and outcomes. Through a structured, participatory process that brought together TRC leaders and staff from multiple states, RTI helped translate the core elements of the TRC model into a shared framework that clearly links program inputs, activities, and outputs with measurable outcomes. 

The resulting logic model provides more than a conceptual roadmap. It offers TRCs a practical tool for aligning services with intended outcomes, strengthening fidelity to the model, and identifying feasible, trauma-informed ways to measure change in the lives of people who experience crime. Importantly, the framework was designed to be flexible enough to apply across diverse TRC settings while still supporting comparability and learning at the national level. 

RTI also partnered directly with states and TRC sites to put this framework into action. For example, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) contracted with RTI to conduct a multi-phase evaluation of hospital- and community-based TRCs, working closely with program leadership to assess fidelity to the TRC model, map service delivery processes, and evaluate survivor outcomes. Our evaluation includes: 

• trauma-informed interviews with survivors, staff, and partners; 
• analysis of clinical and administrative data 
• development of practitioner-oriented reports that TRCs can use for quality improvement and sustainability  

Bringing all these elements together, RTI will provide the Michigan DHHS and participating TRCs with a report with actionable insights that they can use to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of services. 

By embedding evaluation within real-world service environments, RTI partners with TRCs to learn from their data—without increasing burden or compromising survivor-centered care. 

Beyond individual sites, RTI’s national work is helping to prepare the TRC field for the next generation of evidence-building. Through planning studies and evaluability assessments conducted in partnership with NATRC and TRCs across multiple states, RTI is documenting how the TRC model is implemented in diverse contexts, identifying meaningful adaptations, and assessing readiness for future outcome evaluations. 

This work is also informing the development of shared tools—such as fidelity checklists, process maps, and standardized outcome domains—that TRCs and funders can use to support consistent, high-quality implementation as the model continues to expand. 

Together, these efforts are helping ensure that TRCs are expanding with the evidence, infrastructure, and tools needed to demonstrate impact and continuously improve services for survivors of violence. By bridging research and practice, RTI’s work supports TRCs in telling a clear, credible story about what they do, why it works, and how it can be sustained. 

As states and communities invest in trauma-informed responses to violence, RTI’s collaborative approach to evaluation helps ensure those investments translate into meaningful, measurable improvements in survivors’ well-being—today and into the future.