Pre-training practices and contextual determinants of trauma-informed care among community members and youth-serving providers

Youth-serving providers (YSP) and community members (CM) working with trauma-exposed youth often face challenges implementing evidence-based, trauma-informed practices. Understanding the mechanisms that promote best practice uptake and addressing barriers to implementation readiness is critical. Guided by the Socioecological Model (SEM) and implementation science frameworks, this study examined pathways from training participant roles to the use of five best practices for community violence prevention via community violence exposure (CVE) and organizational practices (OP). A parallel multiple mediation model using maximum likelihood estimation with bootstrapping was conducted on 1,295 participants (67.6% female; mean age = 37.1 years, SD = 11.8) across roles (community members, mental health clinicians [clinician], child-focused professionals [CFP], and justice professionals [JP]). Key findings revealed: (a) training participant roles were distinctively associated with use of best practices; (b) roles predicted differences in CVE and OP, with CVE positively associated with all practices; (c) both CVE and OP significantly mediated these relationships; (d) CVE consistently mediated the link between roles and all practices, while OP had mixed effects, reducing practice use for clinicians but enhancing it for CFP and JP. This study uniquely identifies pre-training best practices already in use, emphasizing the importance of addressing CVE and OP to enhance training outcomes. By demonstrating that pre-training differences vary by role, CVE, and OP, this study underscores the need for contextually tailored training and capacity-building efforts. Implications for training and study limitations are discussed.