February 2022

By Kenyon Lee Whitman, Photo: Unsplash, The Imprint, January 27, 2022 O ur existing responses to children and families impacted by the child welfare system falls short in supporting them while children are in foster care, and more certainly after they leave. The Transitional Housing Program (THP), the Chafee Grant, and extended foster care programs, to name a few, are great and help to reduce houselessnes and increase college access. What is lacking are policies that address equitable access...

By Caroline Dooner, Photo: Tetra Images/Alamy, The Guardian, February 1, 2022 A few years ago, I found myself really burnt out. Well, at the time, I wasn’t actually sure that’s what it was. At first “burnout” seemed like a dramatic way to describe what I was experiencing. But I was really, really tired. I was struggling to motivate myself and looking at my calendar starting filling me with a sort of low-grade dread. But the confusing part for me was that on the surface there wasn’t any...

By Meg Shaw, Image: news5cleveland.com, News 5 Cleveland, January 27, 2022 Adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACEs, are traumatic events that can have a lasting or negative impact on a child. According to the CDC , roughly 60% of adults surveyed across 25 states reported having experienced at least one type of ACE. And nearly 1 in 6 reported they had experienced four or more types of ACEs. Some examples include: living with someone who has an alcohol or a drug problem, emotional,...

By Katrin Bennhold, Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images, The New York Times, January 20, 2022 On Jan. 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking officials of the Nazi bureaucracy met in a villa on Lake Wannsee on the western edge of Berlin. Nibbles were served and washed down with cognac. There was only one point on the agenda: “The organizational, logistical and material steps for a final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.” Planning the Holocaust took all of 90 minutes. Eighty years after the infamous...

By Charles Fain Lehman, Images: AP/Reuters/GettyImages, The Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2022 Amid a spate of high-profile crimes, including the murder of two New York City police officers, Mayor Eric Adams debuted a plan to “end gun violence ” and restore order. Part of the proposal is what he calls an “unprecedented” expansion of New York’s summer jobs program, creating jobs for up to 250,000 young New Yorkers. While some may deride such programs as soft on crime, the Adams plan is...

One of the common statistics we hear often from the American Institute of Stress is, how many of our visits to a physician are stress related. Research says 75 to 90% of all the physical stuff we go to the doctor for is rooted in stress. We had already become numb to stress signals in pre-pandemic times. The constant rates of change and uncertainty have disconnected us even further from the signals our body is sending. Not listening, sets us up for doctor visits, costly testing, and dis-ease...

By Dr. Stephanie Irby Coard, 2/1/22, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ Dr. Stephanie Irby Coard, joins HOPE’s Director of Training and Technical Assistance, Amanda Winn, for the first vlog in our new series, HOPE Block by Block. We are kicking off our series by highlighting the impactful work of Black practitioners, scholars, researchers, and community activists during the month of February. In this first episode, Dr. Coard will address the building block of emotional growth,...

This is the second of two stunning illustrations showing how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affected the family of Cendie Stanford, founder of the nonprofit ACEs Matter. Each leaf represents a family member affected by ACEs, and the health consequences they suffered. When Cendie Stanford, founder and president of ACEs Matter , finished drawing “My ACEs Tree—Genealogy” —she saw clearly the remarkable number of ACEs her grandparents, parents, children and extended family had experienced.

By Jan Hoffman, Photo: Eric Baradat/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images, The New York Times, February 1, 2022 Hundreds of Native American tribes that have suffered disproportionately high addiction and death rates during the opioid epidemic agreed on Tuesday to a tentative settlement of $590 million with Johnson & Johnson and the country’s three largest drug distributors. Together with a deal struck last fall between the distributors and the Cherokee Nation for $75 million, the tribes will...

An FBI Special Agent for 23 years, the last three as the Special Agent in Charge of all operations and activities in the State of Mississippi, Christopher Freeze was well acquainted with the pervasive and generational effects of ACEs, or adverse childhood experiences. But during most of his tenure with the FBI, Freeze says, “ACEs was not on my radar at all.” Freeze’s Southern accent belies his roots in Manchester, Tennessee, a small town 50 miles outside of Nashville, where he milked cows...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site — abuseresearch.info — that focuses on the effects of abuse, and includes research articles on PACEs. Every month, she posts the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs, PCEs and PACEs. Thank you, Harise!! — Jane Stevens] Child Abuse Ponton E, Courtemanche R, Singh TK, et. al. Assessing the Social Determinants of Health and Adverse Childhood Experience in Patients Attending a...

By Sylvia Cheuy, Mark Cabaj, and Liz Weaver, Illustration: Hugo Herrera, Stanford Social Innovation Review, January 4, 2022 The collective impact framework has gained interest worldwide for mobilizing high-impact and lasting change on a broad array of complex social issues. As highlighted in this series , for the past decade, countless examples have validated the collective impact framework and deepened understandings of it as a field of practice. Looking ahead to the next decade, what’s...