A Global Mission to Transform Trauma Recovery
Inspired by an exhibit featuring the work of Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, who illuminated the plight of refugees, Janaina “Jana” Pinto ’04 decided she also wanted to document the personal burden of humanitarian crises.
But the Endicott psychology major soon changed course, determining that instead of detailing the tragedy created by war, natural disasters, and other events that create a human toll, she instead wanted to be part of the solution.
“My initial priority was to understand the psychological process of what people go through in traumatic situations so I could be a better journalist,” Pinto said. “But I decided I wanted to work directly with refugees.”
Today Pinto holds a master’s in neuroscience from the University of Queensland (Australia) and a Ph.D. in brain and mind science from the University of Sydney. She has committed her life to developing a model of care and offering it—for free—to survivors of traumatic events so they can not only heal but become agents of change.
In 2021, Pinto launched , a nonprofit with a mission to treat trauma at scale in low-resource settings. After years of working in the humanitarian sector, she has developed a self-guided digital trauma kit to give individuals easy access to evidence-based tools.
While earning her Ph.D., Pinto conducted a clinical trial over eight years to examine the efficacy of the toolkit, which teaches people resilience and self-regulation techniques to manage the physiological and psychological impacts of trauma. Pinto’s approach prioritizes working with the body and regulating the autonomic nervous system, rather than having people recount the details of their trauma.
“Our intervention doesn’t even talk about what happens in the trauma, so users aren’t triggered,” she explained. “It’s focused on the body, boosting executive function, and interpersonal connections. You eventually want to talk with a professional, but we start working with your body—simple things with progressive muscle relaxation, breath work, and other tools for stabilization. Once you feel more control over your body and reactions to triggers, then you’re ready to process that with qualified experts. However, since access to experts is scarce or non-existent in low-resource settings, our self-guided model encourages survivors of trauma to create and nurture social connections, which is also a powerful component of healing.”
Key results from Pinto’s research suggest the digital intervention is working, numbers that eventually led her to launch Sync. Her clinical trial with African refugees resettled in Australia indicates that 90.3% of participants remained in remission from PTSD up to 12 months post-intervention, according to the CAPS assessment (considered the gold-standard diagnostic measure for PTSD). Among those with a comorbid diagnosis of major depressive disorder, 83.2% were also depression-free a year later, according to the DSM-5 (the standard mental health disorder classification used by professionals in the U.S.).
In addition, compared to healthy controls, neuropsychological and neurophysiological data showed significant improvements in executive function and information processing. Although Pinto acknowledges the need to continue research to see how the toolkit translates to active war zones versus post-war settings, the initial results were promising, and she’s working on establishing her program in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other regions in need of trauma support.
“The idea with this nonprofit is that we can continue to collect data around the world,” Pinto said, noting that the Boston-based Trauma Research Foundation provided support for building a cultural adaptation framework to launch a program in Ukraine. “My work in one country might not work in another, so we’ll have the data to guide us through,” she said.
Sync is actually Pinto’s second nonprofit.
In 2008, she launched Second Chance while volunteering at a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana.
Though not her initial plan, the foundation was born when Pinto started teaching basic stress management and other trauma-related skills, and the need for those coping mechanisms warranted a formal organization.
Eventually, unsustainable demand combined with the Ebola endemic and a lack of non-anecdotal evidence convinced Pinto to close Second Chance and conduct her research before starting over.
The origins of Pinto’s research affinity date back to her undergraduate days. Attracted by the College’s strong internship program, now called the Endicott Experiential Edge, Pinto chose to leave her native Brazil to study at Endicott.
She credits an internship at East Boston Neighborhood Health Center with furthering her interest in trauma care. Under the supervision of now-retired Professor Karen Edwards, Pinto’s project compared treatment modalities and how they might impact an HIV patient’s immune system. Her internship experience led to a post-Endicott job at Mass. General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where she researched the genetic linkage of psychiatric conditions.
“The internship opened doors,” Pinto said, “but the most valuable experience I had there was learning how to conduct psychiatric assessments—how to conduct world-class research.”
Her work may be coming full circle as Pinto hopes to now offer internship opportunities for Endicott students at Sync. Her immediate focus is to deliver the trauma care toolkit to Ukraine by the end of 2024 so citizens can access it online. Pinto is also looking to pair Sync with organizations already on the ground in Ukraine to help disseminate her self-guided program. Pinto’s ultimate aim is to help trauma victims “continue life and be able to endure” the trauma they’ve experienced, rather than feel like it’s constantly happening to them.
“My vision is that everybody who needs trauma care has access to it,” Pinto said. “Trauma disrupts life so unexpectedly that if people can learn some of these tools, they can incorporate it into their lives and wake up feeling like it’s more tolerable.”