May 2017

Before the Alaska Resilience Initiative could push forward on any of its goals—to grow a sustainable statewide network; to educate all Alaskans on brain development, ACEs and resilience-building; and to support organizational, policy and practice change to address trauma—its leaders had to start by listening. Specifically, they had to listen to Alaska Native people. Alaska Native people comprise nearly one-fifth of the state’s population, but historically their voices have been largely...

The postcards said a lot more than “wish you were here.” Last spring, Boston’s Vital Village Community Engagement Network created postcards highlighting key data from a survey of parents in the Boston Medical Center pediatric waiting room. Parents were asked if they took part in neighborhood activities and if their actions made a difference in their neighborhoods; in both cases, the most common response was “sometimes.” But data collection didn’t end there; the aim, says Vital Village...

Ina May Gaskin is often referred to as the “mother of modern midwifery.” But when Gaskin was asked at an April 22 birth seminar in Forth Worth, Texas, about the effects of systemic racism on high infant and maternal mortality, her response left many in the Black birthing community questioning her competence. “Drug overdoses, cause number three—that’s a biggie—and I presume these are illegal drugs. Not prescription drugs, but those are also going to be a problem,” said Gaskin, who then...

I see a lot of books presuming to explain what’s wrong with the economy and what to do about it. Rarely do I come across one with the consistent new paradigm frame, historical depth, practical sensibility, systemic analysis, and readability of Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth. Especially unique and valuable is her carefully reasoned, illustrated, and documented debunking of the fatally flawed theory behind economic policies that drive financial instability, environmental collapse, poverty,...

When it opens its doors on Monday, the Roots Community Health Center on The Alameda will be the first primary care service provider in the South Bay aimed at improving the health and well-being of African-Americans. Supporters say it couldn’t happen soon enough. Santa Clara County is home to about 55,000 African-Americans, but the black community here — like African-American communities nationwide — continues to face serious health disparities compared with other racial and ethnic groups.

Black and Latino parents nationwide are convinced that racially based disparities in funding hurt their children’s education and want their youngsters to be more challenged academically, according to a new survey by a civil rights organization. The national poll sponsored by the Leadership Conference Education Fund found that 90 percent of African-American parents and 57 percent of Latinos think that K-12 schools in their minority communities receive less funding than schools in white areas.

As a veteran educator, I have encountered my share of “troublemaker” students—those who talk when they should be quiet, stand up when they should sit down, and generally find endless ways to turn the order of the classroom upside down. For Carla Shalaby, a former elementary-school teacher who has studied at the Rutgers and Harvard graduate schools of education and directed elementary-education programs at Brown University and Wellesley College, the social order of a classroom and the...

This past Halloween, a dozen or so lifers, myself included, sat in a conference room in Attica State Prison in western upstate New York. A man named Anthony Haynes was making his pitch: He wanted each of us, and whoever else we could convince back in the prison population, to consider giving money to his cause. Sure, he was asking only the price of a candy bar each month. But Haynes had been a jailer for more than 33 years, a warden of several different federal prisons — all of which made...

A remarkable milestone occurs in children around their fourth birthdays: They learn that other people can have different thoughts than they do. A recent study is the first to examine the specific brain changes associated with this developmental breakthrough. The new study specifically explored the brain changes that occur when a child is able to recognize that another person believes something that the child knows is false. Once children gain this ability, they can better predict other...

A new animation has been launched to raise awareness of how certain traumatic childhood events can have an impact on a person throughout their entire life. Adverse Childhood Experiences (Welsh) from www.substance.org.uk on Vimeo . Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are those that directly harm a child; such as physical, verbal and sexual abuse or physical or emotional neglect – as well as those that affect the environment where they grow up; including parental separation, domestic...

Note: This excellent article by Kate Masters in the daily Frederick, MD newspaper led me to talk to two of the people interviewed in the story and learn just how much is going on right in my neck of the woods in Frederick County (where I live in Washington, DC is in the same Metro Statistical Area). Anne Soule, Director of Family Support Services, Mental Health Association of Frederick County, and Lynn Davis, Director, Child Advocacy Center of Frederick County, have been working together...

Here's a second post from my recent visit to Walla Walla to learn all I could from them about how they've developed a trauma-informed community. ( ICYMI: here's my first post mapping out Walla Walla's step-by-step approach to building a trauma-informed community ) Integrating the knowledge about ACEs, brain science, and resilience into practice has been a cornerstone of Walla Walla's trauma-informed community initiative. At every monthly meeting of their Community Resilience Initiative (CRI)...