The women who gathered in Fields Corner were bonded by violence and loss. A grandmother who had lost her grandson and five mothers who had lost their sons in shootings sat in the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute headquarters last Thursday evening to share their experiences and offer feedback to the city.

The Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) is holding listening sessions in the neighborhoods to inform citizens about the redesign of its trauma response programming.

As the mothers reopened old wounds, more than 100 mourners gathered a mile and a half away near the Jeremiah E. Burke High School, which had seen a junior shot to death outside and three others injured after a burst of gunfire in the middle of the afternoon the day before.

Every one of these murders — there have been 15 in Boston so far this year — re-traumatizes families who find themselves facing the same seemingly insurmountable road to healing after violence rips through a community, the mothers said.

“It doesn’t end,” said one woman, whose son was shot outside their home nine years ago. “Your child is killed, but it doesn’t end.”

Tina Chery co-founded the Peace Institute in honor of her 15-year-old son, Louis, who was shot and killed just blocks from his home in 1993. The listening session that took place at the institute focused specifically on survivors of homicide, with the participating women representing losses as recently as this winter.

The Dorchester-based institute interfaces with hundreds of survivors and their families, connecting them with services and support networks. The institute’s burial guide, which they hope the city will help support keep on hand for first responders, helps survivors navigate a complex bureaucratic financial process to bury their loved ones with dignity, Chery said.

Of the City of Boston, she and other survivors are asking that there be a more coordinated system of trauma support. “We really want to be a part of that,” she said. “There’s a protocol in this department or that department, but it’s not a city-wide protocol.”

BPHC contracts with eight community health centers in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Each is staffed with a trauma-trained clinician and a trauma-trained community health worker. The health centers are also funded and contracted to provide community prevention, support, and recovery services to the neighborhoods, according to the commission. Between March 2015 and March 2016, the eight community health centers completed 5,577 trauma service visits and welcomed 895 new individual clients, according to BPHC.

The city has budgeted $730,000 through a trauma recovery grant, according to BPHC Executive Director Monica Valdes-Lupi. The amount would fund the redesigned trauma teams program in the health centers, she said, adding, “This is good due diligence. We do this with our programs. This program has been in place with the health centers for the last two years, and so we want to make sure that it is effective and responding to community needs.”

BPHC has three main goals for the new program: rapid in-home or community-based services for survivors of violence and their families, proper responses to attend to community-wide needs, and making surfe residents are connected with long-term support services.

Discussions of access to long-term resources, though vital, was not the primary frustration aired last Thursday. Instead, the conversation zeroed in on the first few hours or days after the violence, when families in search of direction and compassion can find themselves faced with apparent indifference.

When her son was shot, one mother said, the family was not allowed to travel in the ambulance with him. Upon arriving at the hospital, an emergency medical staff member told the dazed mother that her son had had a pulse during the trip, before remarking, “You seem so calm.”

Sitting among the other mothers at the Peace Institute, the woman shook her head. “Calm?” she said. “I was in shock.”

Others reported similar experiences throughout the aftermath, including interactions with police officers appearing disconcertingly detached, with little follow-up throughout the homicide investigations. They described traumatized families being forced to drive the themselves to the hospitals to see their expiring loved ones, navigating the roads in emotional states that could charitably be described as distracted if not outright dangerous.

And the issues spanned decades, with the earliest survivors commenting on the same confounding experiences as those who lost children before their own murdered sons were even born.

The violence in these communities has been pervasive since Valdes-Lupi first worked for the public health commission 15 years ago. “These incidents that we’re seeing are —more often than not— not the first time that young people have witnessed violence or have been impacted by violence in the neighborhood,” she said. “So unfortunately, this is a serious public health problem… and I think that we should be having continual conversations with our residents, so they can help inform what’s working, what’s not working, and how we can improve upon the efforts. … We have to come back to them, that were having to adjust the response to be more effective, because we’re hearing, right, that it hasn’t been effective.”

Four more listening sessions are planned, then the city will issue a Request For Proposals on the trauma program, which would then incorporate listening session feedback. The current program will remain in place through the summer, when the city often see spikes in violence. A new program will then start in the fall.

Survivors, many of whom are frequent faces in discussion of city homicide and trauma, compared the feedback process to the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

One mother, who has been outspoken about the impact of violence in the years after her son’s death, leaned forward, ready to again testify to the BPHC staff on the lasting trauma she and her family carry. “I’m going to say this,” she told them, “but I don’t want to say it again.”