The Community's Scale
for Healing Possibilities
The first scale in the nation built to measure healing from community violence

The Community's Scale for Healing Possibilities

The field had many ways to measure harm, symptoms and coping. It had no meaningful way to measure healing, as defined by the people who live it, practice it and fight for it every day. So communities built one.

Bring a session to your communityRead the Guidebook (PDF)Explore the four dimensions

Prepared by Dr. Anna Ortega-Williams, Daria Waite, Dr. Bruce Purnell, Richard Smith and Dr. Alexis Jemal, with seven founding community partners across the U.S.

Defined by those most impacted
Healing from community violence is getting to the core of the harm and reclaiming possibilities.

Community violence is harm initiated by a person(s) and institutions against another person and a community. It is fueled by past pain, oppression and shut-down views of the future. It creates personal harm and community rupture.

Why a new scale

From measuring harm to measuring healing

Traditional trauma scales focus mainly on harmful effects, such as symptoms of PTSD. That narrow focus overlooks the language and stories of healing that live in Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian and other communities of color, where violence sits inside histories of trauma and systemic harm, and so do powerful strategies of healing.

Traditional trauma measures
The CSHP
Symptoms and the aftermath of harm
Wisdom, joy, strengths, growth and the meaning of healing
Defined by outside experts
Defined by the people engaged in healing and those directly impacted
Individual and narrow
Personal and collective, inside the context of historical trauma and structural violence
Is the program working?
What healing capacities are already present? What needs more nurturing?
How the scale works

Four dimensions of healing

36 statements, four factors, one invitation to reflect.

Factor one

Getting to the core

Individual reflection and transformation. Learning about what happened to me and what I can do to heal before I do it.

Am I getting to the core of what happened?

Factor two

Reclaiming possibilities and hope

Persisting in committing to hope; “doing hope” and believing in myself. Something is “right” with me.

Can I imagine possibilities beyond harm?

Factor three

Faith in healing

Believing healing is possible for everyone. Believing in wisdom from inside.

Is healing even a possibility for me?

Factor four

Trusting community in healing

Committing to the healing journey in community. Taking oneself and others on it.

Do I trust myself and my community in this healing process?

Healing Possibilities

Each statement is answered never, sometimes, often, or prefer not to answer. The scale captures today. Healing is ongoing.

Tested and trusted

Built with rigor, rooted in community

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the four-factor structure. The scale also tracked as hypothesized with established measures: it rose with hope and self-efficacy and fell with stress, trauma and depression.

Cronbach's alpha: the highest category of internal consistency
0.9
Split-half reliability
0.71
Participants who completed the scale
226
Under 25 years old
51%
Statements across four factors
36
Founding community partners across the U.S.
7
The journey of the scale

From a town hall to a national tool

Seven years of listening, building and testing, funded and accompanied by the Annie E. Casey Foundation from 2019 to 2026.

  1. September 2019

    The Town Hall

    What is healing? What does it look, sound, feel and act like?

    Common Justice and community and university researchers invited more than 30 people from 17 organizations across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. and California to a Trauma, Healing, and Organizational Wisdom Exchange. Themes included healing in community, relationship building, healing as ancestral, love, imagining, sense of self and helping others. The scale development team emerged from that room.

  2. The search

    No scale grounded in the lives of those most impacted

    A literature review found plenty of tools for symptoms and well-being, but none measuring healing from community violence that included social justice and historical trauma, as defined by the people doing the healing.

  3. Across the U.S.

    The partnership

    Community-based organizations and universities, side by side

    Seven community-based organizations, including the Love More Movement, shaped every stage: definition, item writing, revision, recruitment and analysis. The process was healing-justice informed, trauma-informed and social-justice based.

  4. Spring–summer 2021During the height of COVID-19

    The testing

    More than 300 people reached

    Partners stayed committed through one of the hardest periods in recent history. Analyses retained 36 statements across four factors with strong reliability and validity.

  5. 2025–2026Nationwide

    The Learning Collaborative

    12–15 survivor-centered organizations

    Organizations from Nashville to Seattle, Sacramento to St. Louis piloted the scale, built implementation plans and explored what the results mean for healing-centered programming.

  6. April 2026

    The Guidebook

    Healing should not be an afterthought

    Best practices for using the scale with dignity, and two academic publications in press.

Using the scale well

Five principles for healing-centered measurement

The CSHP is more than a tool to measure outcomes. It is an invitation to reflection, conversation and recognition of personal, relational and collective growth.

01

Create a supportive space

Physically and emotionally safe, with support and a clear path to follow-up. No one should feel alone while reflecting.

02

A snapshot in time

Healing is not linear. Scores show where someone is today, never their worth or potential.

03

Keep scores in context

Structural racism, economic instability, violence and access to resources shape healing. Low scores are not failure; high scores are not completion.

04

Look for growth and possibility

Surface overlooked healing, highlight strengths and see where more support is needed. Evaluation shifts from judgment to curiosity.

05

The scale is generative

Community can be healing. Repairing relationships can be healing. Rebuilding trust can be healing.

Always

Debrief, never file away

Meaning-making transforms data into healing insight.

After the scale

Questions for meaning-making

Questions Journeyers can ask themselves, or be asked by the person guiding the scale.

  1. How far I've come

    What does this show me about how far I've come?

  2. Where I am now

    What does this show me about where I am right now?

  3. Where I want to grow

    What does this show me about where I want to grow?

  4. What is opening

    What possibilities for healing are opening for me?

  5. What helps

    What support or action steps might help me move forward?

  6. You are not alone

    If something comes up for you, you are not alone.

What's next for the CSHP

Meaning-making and translation

The CSHP is entering its next chapter. We are moving into meaning-making sessions with larger groups across the country and translating the scale so more communities can use it. As the Guidebook says, the scale should never be administered and filed away without discussion: meaning-making transforms data into healing insight.

Reflect

How far we've come

What does this show us about how far we've come, and where we are right now?

Grow

What is opening

What possibilities for healing are opening? Where do we want to grow, and what needs more nurturing?

Act

What comes next

What support, action steps and programming would help people move forward, in context and with dignity?

Translate

In more languages

Translations of the scale are underway, so more communities can reflect on healing in their own words.

The Community's Scale for Healing Possibilities logo: golden scales with C S and H P, held by open hands
The CSHP Guidebook · April 2026

Everything you need to use the scale well

Prepared by Dr. Anna Ortega-Williams, Daria Waite, Dr. Bruce Purnell, Richard Smith and Dr. Alexis Jemal.

The Guidebook tells the story of the scale's development and testing, explains the four dimensions, and offers best practices for using the CSHP with dignity: creating a supportive space, treating scores as a snapshot in time, keeping them in context, and debriefing so data becomes healing insight.

Read the Guidebook (PDF)
Founding community partners

The Scale Development Team

Seven community-based organizations, joined by researchers from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, Drexel University and Alignment Global. Core Planning Team: Richard Smith (Alignment Global), Dr. Anna Ortega-Williams and Dr. Alexis Jemal (Hunter College), Dr. Bruce Purnell (The Love More Movement), Daria Waite (Drexel University) and Jennifer Lopez (Independent Consultant).

2025–2026

The Learning Collaborative

Survivor-centered organizations piloting the scale across the country, alongside the founding partners and Annie E. Casey grantees.

Learn more

Research and resources

Publications (in press)

Ortega-Williams, A., Jemal, A., Waite, D., Purnell, B., Greene, A. C., Oyeyemi, O., & Smith, R. The Community's Scale for Healing Possibilities: Participatory scale development for measuring healing from community violence. Advances in Social Work.

Jemal, A., Waite, D., Ortega-Williams, A., Purnell, B., Greene, A., Oyeyemi, O., & Smith, R. Participatory healing scale development: Exploring team dynamics, culture, and methods. In Decolonizing quantitative methods.

From the Annie E. Casey Foundation

A New Way to Measure Healing from Violence (article) · Watch the webinar

With deep gratitude to the Annie E. Casey Foundation for funding and walking alongside this work from 2019 to 2026, to Common Justice for the vision to ask the question, and to the young people whose voices shaped every part of the scale.

Toward a culture shift
Healing should not be an afterthought. It should not be invisible. It should not be unfunded.

Our hope is that the CSHP will not only be used but lived with: in ceremonies, circles, classrooms, reentry programs, youth spaces, survivor groups, recreation centers and intergenerational spaces.

Connect with us

Bring the CSHP to your community

Request a meaning-making session, ask about translations, or get guidance on using the scale in your program. We'll be in touch.

Point of ContactDr. Bruce PurnellCo-author of the CSHP · Founder, The Love More Movementdr.bruce@lovemoremovement.org