Abstract

Clinical practice guidelines, such as those focusing on traumatic stress treatment, can play an important role in promoting inclusion and equity. Based on a review of 14 international trauma treatment guidance documents that explicitly mentioned children, we reflect on two areas in which these guidelines can become more inclusive and equitable; a) representation of children's cultural background and b) children's opportunity to have their voice heard. While a few guidelines mentioned that treatment should be tailored to children's cultural needs, there was little guidance on how this could be done. Moreover, there still appears to be a strong white Western lens across all stages of producing and evaluating the international evidence base. The available documentation also suggested that no young people under the age of 18 had been consulted in the guideline development processes. To contribute to inclusion and equity, we suggest five elements for future national guideline development endeavours. Promoting research and guideline development with, by, and for currently under-represented communities should be a high priority for our field. Our national, regional and global professional associations are in an excellent position to (continue to) stimulate conversation and action in this domain.

Document Type

Letter to the Editor

Publication Date

11-26-2020

Notes/Citation Information

Published in European Journal of Psychotraumatology, v. 11, issue 1, article 1833657.

2020 The Author(s)

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2020.1833657

Funding Information

RMH receives funding from the National Institute for Health Research [NIHR200586]. EA is supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT190100255].

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