Blog

The Collaborative is pleased to share three policy briefs on the impact of ACEs in the health, justice, and education systems including promising practices and recommended actions for change. These briefs were developed by members of the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative—system leaders in Illinois who are working from an ACEs-informed lens to improve systems to prevent and mitigate trauma across generations. Rooted in social justice, these briefs are a call to action to move upstream,...

This new research on early emotional trauma, epigenetic changes, and adult physical disease breaks down longstanding barriers between what the medical community has long seen as “physical” disease versus what is “mental” or “emotional.”

In the final weeks of the 114 th Congress, Senators Heitkamp, Durbin, and Franken introduced The Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families Act (S. 3519)—a wide ranging bill that proposes new strategies to expand trauma-informed best practices and models, train clinicians, law enforcement officials, teachers and health care providers in trauma-informed approaches, and improve the understanding of trauma’s impact and prevalence. Despite the lack of fanfare around the bill’s introduction,...

In a study about identity, female Asian-American college students were asked to take a math test. Before the test, one group was asked questions that primed them to think of themselves as women first (for example, their views about co-ed dorms). The other group was asked questions that primed them to think of themselves as Asian first (what languages they spoke at home, and how many generations of their family had lived in the United States). The women primed to think of themselves as female...

You probably already know the United States has some of the worst parental leave laws in the world. Among the 41 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. is the only one with no guaranteed paid time off to care for a new baby. But it’s hard to say how these laws actually affect new parents, since no federal agency collects data on how many workers take parental leave. A few recent analyses, however, might offer some clues. It turns out that...

In 2015, the Aspen Institute, joined by Mark Warner , the Democratic senator from Virginia, and Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana, launched an ambitious project called the Future of Work. The purpose of the initiative, which was initially prompted by Warner’s interest in the policy issues posed by the growing gig economy, is, according to its website , “to propose a new course — a way to upgrade America’s economic reward structure to keep pace with the shifting...

Should we require presidents to have their mental health verified? Jimmy Carter wanted a panel of physicians who would routinely evaluate the Commander-In-Chief's psychological health, and many say checking the mental capacity of the person who will control our nuclear arsenal is just common sense. Yet some of our greatest leaders struggled with mental health issues. Abraham Lincoln was famously depressive --would he have been disqualified? Do you think presidents need a psychological exam?

The confirmation hearing of Betsy DeVos, packed with reporters, surrogates, and congressional staff, was more heated than any Department of Education hearing in recent memory. DeVos made headlines for her evasive answers about political contributions made by her family’s foundation , her failures to denounce gun bans in schools ( citing the threat of “potential grizzly bears” ), and her shaky grasp of federal education in general . But one topic never came up: American schools’ deeply...

It’s a little before 3 p.m. on a sunny Friday afternoon and Laugardalur Park, near central Reykjavik, looks practically deserted. There’s an occasional adult with a stroller, but the park’s surrounded by apartment blocks and houses, and school’s out—so where are all the kids? Walking with me are Gudberg Jónsson, a local psychologist, and Harvey Milkman, an American psychology professor who teaches for part of the year at Reykjavik University. Twenty years ago, says Gudberg, Icelandic teens...

By 2010, Bill Haynes had spent almost four decades under attack from the inside of his skull. He was fifty-seven years old, and he suffered from severe migraines that felt as if a drill were working behind his eyes, across his forehead, and down the back of his head and neck. They left him nauseated, causing him to vomit every half hour for up to eighteen hours. He’d spend a day and a half in bed, and then another day stumbling through sentences. The pain would gradually subside, but often...

Join healthcare policymakers, practitioners, researchers and advocates from multiple organizations for a live Twitter chat, featuring SAMHSA’s Paolo del Vecchio , on the important topic of integrated behavioral healthcare and medicine on Wednesday, January 25th 2-3pm Eastern Time. [For more information go to ...

Pregnant women in South Africa who live in poor communities are more likely to consider or attempt suicide than the general population. That’s a key finding from a recent study we undertook at Hanover Park. The research found 12% of pregnant women living in low-resource communities had thought of killing themselves during the previous month. In the same period, an additional 6% of pregnant women reported they had started to enact a suicide plan or attempted to end their lives. Rates of...