Blog

When the Association of State and Territorial Health Organizations (ASTHO) fielded the ACEs capacity assessment tool (ACECAT) in 2019, it prompted a 75% response rate, reflecting the states’ growing awareness of the impact of ACEs on health and eagerness to add to the body of knowledge about states’ activities and capacities around ACEs. After participating in the ACECAT, Nicole Daley, Director of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Division of Violence and Injury Prevention,...

By Jason W. Selby, Globe Gazette, March 17, 2021 For Jasper the therapy dog and counselor Sharon Reinardy, it is their first year of work at Osage Middle School. “We’re learning together,” Reinardy said. It is Saint Patrick’s Day. Normally Jasper would be resting at home, but now he has a job. He belongs to special education teacher Ashlyn Hubbard, and after a few years of training, they passed through the doors as fellow employees, dressed in green. [ Please click here to read more .]

By Rachel Zimlich, Contemporary Pediatrics, November 26, 2019 The lifelong negative effects that adverse childhood experiences have on adult mental health are well-established, but new research suggests that positive childhood experiences can help mitigate the damage. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, published a study in JAMA Pediatrics revealing that positive childhood experiences are just as important as negative ones, and can actually...

By Alex Daniels, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, March 15, 2021 Coming to the office in July 2016 was like entering a void for C’Ardiss Gardner Gleser. Over the course of three days that month, two Black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, had been shot dead by the police. Work at the Satterberg Foundation, where Gardner Gleser served as a program officer, hummed along as usual as she grieved in silence. “I had to leave work because I couldn’t sit there and do nothing and be in this...

By Robert C. Whitaker, Tracy Dearth-Wesley, and Allison N. Herman, Academic Pediatrics, March 10, 2021 Abstract Objectives To investigate whether higher levels of childhood family connection were associated with greater adult flourishing and if this association was present across levels of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and childhood socioeconomic disadvantage (SED). Methods We pooled cross-sectional data from telephone and mailed surveys in the Midlife in the United States study that...

By Maya Hazarika Watts, Katie Hannon Michel, Jessica Breslin, and Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler, American Journal of Public Health, February 10, 2021 As COVID-19 inflicts disproportionate harm on communities of color, inequitable enforcement of pandemic response policies further widens health disparities. (Although “pandemic response policies” include many interventions, we use the term to reference public health policies adopted to limit viral spread.) These actions are extensions of persistent...

The Adolescent Redemption Project (TARP) is a new Michigan-based nonprofit dedicated to a second chance for incarcerated individuals when they were sentenced before age 25 or experienced multiple ACEs. Thursday's event is an opportunity to hear from Breonna Taylor ’s sister Dee Dee Taylor , a member of our board, who is a passionate advocate for getting her father Everette Taylor out of prison as soon as possible. We’re a fledgling 501c4, only less than a year old. We have no staff, only a...

So many people are struggling with unhealed, hidden wounds from toxic childhood stress. For some the pain is obvious. Others might look outwardly strong, capable, and in control. However, unhealed inner wounds cause needless suffering and can lead to a dizzying array of psychological, medical, and functional problems. This three-part blog discusses the road to recovery. Part I explained “The Principles of Healing.” This part explains why traditional treatments are not usually the best...

By Akilah Johnson, The Washington Post, March 15, 2021 Her lungs aching with each breath, Blanca Quintero, a 53-year-old cancer survivor, sought care for the coronavirus from physicians almost two hours away in Mexicali, Mexico, because her calls to doctors here went unanswered. Was she being overlooked in the flurry of the winter surge or simply ignored, another instance of the mistreatment she and other Latino patients have faced as Spanish-speaking immigrants, she wondered. Was the risk...

In this episode of the Trauma Informed Lens Podcast, Melissa Vine joins the show to discuss the link between trauma, entitlement, and domestic/intimate partner violence. www.traumainformedlens.org

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, March 16, 2021 As students begin returning to the classroom as the pandemic eases, schools are bracing for an onslaught of serious mental health conditions that, for some students, may take years to overcome. In the year that campuses were closed due to Covid-19, students experienced waves of loneliness, fear, upheaval and grief. Some lost loved ones, others saw their parents lose their jobs and their families sink into poverty. Nearly all experienced a degree of...

From Niagara Frontier Publications, February 26, 2021 The Osborne Association and the Buffalo Police Department announced the Safeguarding Children of Arrested Parents Project to develop and enact a child-sensitive policing policy, protocols, and training to minimize the potential trauma for children from parental arrest and other police enforcement activities. A new consortium of WNY youth-serving agencies is advising the project and working to provide trauma-informed follow-up services to...