Blog

One out of five California adults with children living in their homes were beaten, kicked or physically abused when they were children, and one in ten were sexually abused, according to data released recently by a children’s health foundation. Experts believe that’s an undercount. “I think it’s probably a low estimate,” said Cassandra Joubert, director of the Central California Children’s Institute at California State University, Fresno. “I think these kinds of events within families are...

More than half of Americans have at least one chronic disease, mental illness or problem with drugs or alcohol, according to a new study. "The health of individuals in the U.S.A. is increasingly being defined by complexity and multimorbidity, the co-occurrence of two or more chronic medical conditions," said the study authors, Elizabeth Lee Reisinger Walker and Dr. Benjamin Druss. They emphasized that people with multiple health issues need more access to care and better coordination among...

Meet the seven winners of the 2016 RWJF Culture of Health Prize, in a visual tour through innovative breakthroughs that could serve every American community. [Go to http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/robert-wood-johnson-foundation-2016-syndicated/this-is-what-a-culture-of-health-looks-like-in-america-today/1085/]

Back in March, Anderson Cooper famously compared Donald Trump to a 5-year-old. The presidential nominee had tweeted a flattering photo of his wife Melania juxtaposed with a less-flattering photo of the wife of his then-opponent Ted Cruz, and, when Cooper pressed him, he defended the tweet with a kindergartener’s default excuse: “I didn’t start it.” Trump turned 70 this summer. But there may, in the broadest of senses, be science to support Cooper’s analogy—at least when considering what his...

For many Missouri health advocates, an increase in the state's tobacco tax is long overdue. But onlookers might be surprised to hear that tobacco companies are spending a fortune this election year to get one or another increase in that tax passed, while health groups are urging a no vote. At 17 cents for a pack of cigarettes, Missouri's tax is the lowest in the country — a fraction of what you'd pay in many states. New York's tax is the highest at $4.35 a pack, for example, and Florida...

In conjunction with the Office of the First Lady of the United States, Center for Deployment Psychology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The goal of Joining Forces Wellness Week is to increase awareness about the health needs of the nation's veterans, service members, and their families. Our friends at the Center for Deployment Psychology are hosting a series of five free webinars during Joining...

At last week's Pathways to Resilience: Dispelling the Baggage of ACEs, Dr. Cheryl Grills explored the multi-generational trauma experienced by enslaved African Americans and the enduring effects that are felt by their descendants today.

It's hard for Zachary Lane to wake up in time for school every day. "I have four alarms set and it still takes me a long time to wake me up," says Lane, a 17-year-old high school junior in Zionsville, Ind. He says he regularly gets detention for being tardy. "I get to school and I'm talked to like I'm attempting to skip school — like I'm attempting to be truant," he says. "I feel terrible. It's awful." And when Lane does make it to class on time, he has a hard time focusing. "I feel kind of...

Mothers in therapy for drug and alcohol use recover faster if their children take part in their treatment sessions, according to a first-of-its-kind study. Researchers found that women who were in family therapy – which included their 8- to 16-year-old children – showed a quicker decline in alcohol, marijuana and cocaine use over 18 months compared to mothers who were in individual therapy. This is the first study to examine the effectiveness of family therapy for mothers who are substance...

In the 2015-2016 school year — one year after implementation — student arrests fell to 569. Only 13 percent of those students have messed up their second chance and been arrested. Compare that to recidivism rates among youth who spend time in placement, “which varies from 37 to 67 percent.”

It seems to me that if we want to reduce adverse childhood experiences we must work to improve the quality of parenting in communities. Visit advancingparenting.org to learn about a small nonprofit organization pioneering passive/public parenting education.

To hear pediatrician and activist Nadine Burke-Harris tell it, the movement to address the epidemic of childhood trauma has come a long way in the past two years. “When I first started talked about this eight years ago, I would get into a room of a thousand people and I would ask how many folks had heard of adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress,” Burke-Harris said at a conference last week organized by her organization, the San Francisco-based Center for Youth Wellness (CYW). “Three...