February 2019

As Gov. Gavin Newsom pushes to expand subsidized childcare in California, a new report indicates that the state still has a long way to go to reach a substantial share of its neediest children. Only 1 in 9 children eligible for subsidized childcare and preschool programs in California were enrolled in a program that provided full-day, year-round care in 2017, according to an analysis by the California Budget and Policy Center, a nonpartisan organization that analyzes how budget and tax...

The fact that the Kendall County Health Department has office space in the newly-opened police headquarters in Oswego says a lot about how important police think the issue of mental health is, officials said. Oswego Police Chief Jeff Burgner said the office provides another location for the community to consult with a public health staff member but it also benefits the police department. [For more of this story, written by Linda Girardi, go to ...

Tarah Hargrove stands before a massive painting. One side is dominated by grey cinder blocks and stencils of guns. The other by a yellow sky filled with birds. And in the center is a giant portrait of Hargrove, herself. Her chin is lifted, and she looks defiantly at the viewer, magenta radiating from her hair. “So my inner narcissist was like, ‘Yay! My face!” Hargrove said, laughing about her first impression of the four-panel mural painted by University of Alaska Anchorage students. Though...

School counselors and psychologists gathered recently for a day of collaboration and discussion centered around suicide prevention, adverse childhood experiences and trauma-informed care. As the group discussed the impacts of social supports and early intervention, one tool used in the training was the Brain Architecture Game, a tabletop game experience that builds understanding of the role of relationships on early brain development — what promotes it, what derails it with what consequences...

“Smart, Safe, and Fair: Strategies to Prevent Youth Violence, Heal Victims of Crimes, and Reduce Racial Inequality,” published through a collaboration between the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) addresses how to help youth involved in violent crime — both offenders and victims. Confinement of youth convicted of crimes has decreased; however, violent crime convictions have not. The report shows that confinement of youth is more expensive and...

Advocates often urge the dismantling of the school-to-prison pipeline. But for many of our youth, prisons are already their schools. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education first demonstrated that “separate but equal” is an unacceptable doctrine within our school system. Yet the doctrine of separate and unequal continues today through the placement of a disproportionate number of minority students and students with disabilities in youth detention facilities, where they receive educational...

Mindfulness is a powerful painkiller that can dramatically enhance the quality of life in chronic pain sufferers, suggests new research. The findings add weight to previous studies which discovered that mindfulness can reduce pain severity by around 50 percent. This new meta-analysis, published in the peer-reviewed journal Evidence-Based Mental Health , analyzed the evidence from 21 previous studies involving 2,000 chronic pain sufferers. It was designed to assess whether mindfulness was as...

Exactly six years ago this week, I wrote a post, “ The Neurobiology of Grace Under Pressure, ” which offered some practical advice on different ways to increase parasympathetic activation within the autonomic nervous system (which counterbalances fight-or-flight responses) by engaging the vagus nerve . One section of that 2013 post recommended practicing Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM) . Typically, during LKM you systematically direct warm-hearted thoughts of love and kindness to four...

Mindfulness meditation has long been touted as a way to reduce stress and pain. More recently, it also has gained traction as a tool to improve our relationships, helping us to be more kind and less biased and angry when we regularly practice it. Yet when we talk about mindful meditation, often we are thinking about a combination of practices that have been taught together for millennia. These might include breath awareness—focusing on your breath and letting thoughts and feelings pass by...

@Christine Cissy White asked me to share more about the Bridging to Resilience Conference. I am blown away by the depth of expertise presenting with us this year! There is no other conference like this. We will have at-promise students and parents sharing with us as well as community organizations that are hungry to partner with schools for solutions! We are so much stronger when everyone’s at the table! Conference highlights: Opening Remarks and kickoff by ACEs Connection Founder,...

Vincent Felitti is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, and the founder of the Department of Preventive Medicine for Kaiser Permanente, where he served as the chief of preventive medicine for 26 years, during which time his department provided comprehensive medical evaluations to 1.1 million individuals, becoming the largest single-site medical evaluation facility in the western world. In today’s episode we discuss the history and origins of the Adverse...

“Run,” he would shout. On two legs, I couldn’t match the speed of a terrified calf or steer, but I was plenty fast, especially in a sprint, so I’d launch myself across the gravel in front of our trailer while my father stood about ten yards behind me twirling his rope.