March 2017

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the Academy on Violence and Abuse Regional Summit in St. Louis. It was enjoyable listening to local health care providers use a trauma-informed lens to discuss medical care. As well as listening to internationally known experts on the seminal Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study. I also had the honor of sitting on a panel that showcased St. Louis based health care practices that are adapting ACEs Science into patient/consumer interactions...

Gratitude – we’re all capable of it, but sometimes we need a little reminder, or a little convincing to practice it. There are many reasons to practice gratitude, but we are only recently discovering one of the big ones – its capacity to change and strengthen the brain in remarkably positive ways. Gratitude is powerful. It might not throw itself at our feet and demand our attention in a ‘why oh why won’t you notice me’ kind of way, but it’s powerful. Research has shown that gratitude can...

When weary Muslims gathered in Toronto in December for an annual retreat, marking the end of a tumultuous U.S. election year, they probably didn’t expect the event to turn into a referendum on racial tensions within the American Muslim community. But it did. One session was led by Hamza Yusuf, a well respected white scholar who co-founded Zaytuna College, which claims to be America’s first Muslim liberal-arts college. At the end, he was asked whether Muslims should work with groups like...

The ongoing political and legal controversy over President Donald Trump’s revised executive order banning visitors from six Muslim-majority countries is the latest flashpoint in what has become one of the great moral conundrums of our time: What to do about the refugees of the Syrian Civil War? Since 2011, the Syrian Civil War has forced some five million Syrians out of the country. And as millions flee and risk their lives trying to find a stable land, surrounding countries, Europe, and the...

By Kristen S. Slack, Sarah A. Font, and Jennifer Jones TAKEN FROM REPORT: An extensive research base shows evidence of racial disparities in health outcomes, and a growing body of evidence points to associations between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and poor health. This study uses data from the 2011 and 2012 Wisconsin Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys to identify the relative contributions of ACEs, race, and adult income to predicting three sets of adverse adult...

This month at Partner for Healing we are discussing work place relationships. Are they important? Research from Gallup shows us that employees rating of the social support they get at work correlates with how satisfied they are with their jobs.An article by Kyle D. Killian, Helping Till It Hurts? A Multimethod Study of Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Self-Care in Clinicians Working With Trauma Survivors (Traumatology Volume 14 Number 2 June 2008 32-44 © 2008 Sage Publications) describes...

Since the sociologist William Julius Wilson examined increasing poverty in black urban neighborhoods in his groundbreaking 1987 book, The Truly Disadvantaged, researchers have avidly studied the effects of geography on low-income city residents. Recent research on a Denver public housing program adds to this body of work by offering conclusions about the benefits of neighborhood economic diversity for low-income black and Latino youth. George Galster, a professor of urban affairs at Wayne...

A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them Letcher County, Kentucky, is one of the most open-minded places I’ve ever lived. I might not have believed it either, before I moved here a year ago. I’ve spent most of my life in cities and suburbs, and I arrived with all the assumptions you can imagine about Central Appalachia and the people who live here. But if you’ve been here, or to similar places, you know how wrong those assumptions can be. Yes, some people fly Confederate flags. One...

A little-noticed bill moving through Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information. Giving employers such power is now prohibited by legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic...

Human memory is a sensory experience, says psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. Through his longtime research and innovation in trauma treatment, he shares what he’s learning about how bodywork like yoga or eye movement therapy can restore a sense of goodness and safety. What he’s learning speaks to a resilience we can all cultivate in the face of the overwhelming events — which, after all, make up the drama of culture, of news, and of life. [For more of this interview, go to ...

As California shifts away from its reliance on group homes for children and youth in foster care, the first domino to drop is the elimination of 30-day emergency shelter facilities. As California rolls out the ambitious overhaul of its foster care system , advocates who pushed for the reform are hopeful that shortening timelines for placement, and other imminent changes, will disrupt the system and transform it into one that better serves children. But, some local service providers are...

The Youth First Initiative has released a new report “Breaking Down the Walls” highlighting the achievements of youth, families, and advocates in six states to help advance a new vision of youth justice. The report serves as a playbook for activists working to end the juvenile justice systems’ reliance on incarceration throughout the nation. To accelerate the efforts to end harmful and inequitable youth incarceration, and to build on the work of the youth, families, and advocates who have...