Community care workers have been stretched to their capacity and exposed to ongoing trauma through their work addressing persistent health disparities in Inland Empire communities. The coronavirus pandemic and gap in Covid-19 mortality for minorities have highlighted the chronic stressors of racial injustice and dispossession that predate the pandemic and explain why these populations have higher comorbidities. While the pandemic has exacerbated ongoing stressors, the map of this crisis of care may show the way to deeper solutions. The premise of this project is that care occurs in a continuum of caretakers who also require care. The proposal seeks to address and complicate the question: who cares for the caregivers? This study will interrogate the benefits of providing a comics-making workshop, combined with trauma education and somatic experiencing, as a set of resiliency tools for care providers working with traumatized populations.

The investigators will recruit up to 20 care workers from community-based organizations to participate in a series of comics workshops, who may also exhibit their work locally. The team will rigorously assess participants' experiences and changes in their wellbeing over time. This project provides preliminary data and a groundwork for larger investigations of how creating a space where caretakers can come together, learn about trauma healing and resiliency building, and share their post-traumatic growth and struggles with one another, increases both the resiliency of caretakers and the larger community.

Inclusion Criteria:

18 years of age or more, Any care workers in the Inland Empire (Riverside or San Bernardino Counties) will be eligible to participate.

Exclusion Criteria:

There are no other specific exclusion criteria in terms of age, race, or gender, though we will aim to recruit a diverse sample that reflects the diversity in our community.

Community care workers have been stretched to their capacity and exposed to ongoing trauma through their work addressing persistent health disparities in Inland Empire communities. The study is open to anyone living in the Riverside area who works a caregiver, broadly construed. This may include people working in education, healthcare, and non-profits.

Because only 13 participants were enrolled in this pilot study, there is a heightened risk of identification even if direct identifiers are removed. Small sample sizes make it much easier for someone to infer or link data back to an individual based on combinations of demographics or clinical features. For these reasons, the Principal Investigator will not share the full individual-level dataset.