Dr. Sandra Bloom
Distinguished Fellow

Dr. Sandra Bloom served as Executive Director of The Sanctuary® programs from 1980-2001. Dr. Bloom has devoted her clinical work and practice to the development of safe environments for the treatment of adults who have been abused as children. Her first book, Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies is devoted to the story of her experiences developing inpatient programs for traumatized adults. The Sanctuary Model® is the first well-defined model for milieu treatment integrating trauma theory with therapeutic community principles and the practice of nonviolence.

Her second book, Bearing Witness: Violence and Collective Responsibility, reflects her passion for prevention and the development of broader social policy initiatives to prevent violence. She is a Past- President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Past-President of Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility and served as chair for the Task Force on Family Violence for the Attorney General of Pennsylvania.

Recently her interest has turned toward introducing the Sanctuary Model into other types of settings. In 2000, NIMH awarded a research grant to study the introduction of the Sanctuary Model into residential treatment programs for traumatized children and adolescents in New York. That study yielded positive results, including reduction of client symptomology and improvements in organizational culture.

Dr. Bloom has also worked with Atlantic County School Districts in New Jersey to formulate a Safe Schools program using Sanctuary in the Schools® and with the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office to create a residential program as an alternative to incarceration for women and their children based on the Sanctuary Model.