Tagged With "Lunar Year"
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NJ Resiliency in Action: How Leaders for Life Helped Gloria, A Struggling Mother in Newark
My name is Gloria and I’m a 36-year-old Puerto Rican mom of five children — three boys and two girls — who was born and raised in Newark. In December 2016 I was able to move my family out of a small two-bedroom apartment in Bradley Courts housing project to a four-bedroom apartment on Clinton Place and that’s where my family became a part of the Leaders for Life (L4L) family. One of my sons is a special needs child who is always looking for friends and a place to play. He started finding new...
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Weekly Highlights
Murphy signs bill to release thousands of N.J. prisoners early beginning the day after Election Day On October 19th, Governor Murphy signed legislation to free those trapped inside New Jersey jails, prisons, and halfway houses, where they face the worst COVID-19 outbreak of any prison system in the country. We anticipate that over 2,000 men and women within 8 months of their release date will gain relief from Public Health Emergency Credits, and will be released in the first week of...
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Weekly Highlights
Neighborhood conditions associated with children’s cognitive function November 4, 2020 U.S. National Institutes of Health A study published today in JAMA Network Open shows that children from poorer neighborhoods perform less well on a range of cognitive functions, such as verbal ability, reading skills, memory, and attention, and have smaller brain volumes in key cognitive regions compared to those from wealthier neighborhoods. While multiple studies have shown that household socioeconomic...
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Weekly Highlights
Native American Heritage Month When COVID-19 hit the Navajo Nation, it limited students’ educational opportunities after schools closed, eliminated essential school services, exposed ongoing inequities, and made health and economic hardships families face worse. Navajo health officials said COVID-19 started spreading across the nation after a tribal member attended a basketball tournament in early March then went to a church revival the next day in Chilchinbeto, a small community south of...
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Weekly Highlights
Helping Children Heal: Resilience; The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope December 4, 2020 December 7, 2020 https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/4504282835155688464 Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and DCF Commissioner Christine Norbut Beyer invite you to watch this documentary and engage in an interactive conversation about how New Jersey can address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in our children. Watch: December 4, 2020 , You will receive a link to watch the documentary...
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NJ medical school program requires all first-year students to learn about ACEs science
In 2015, Dr. Beth Pletcher, a pediatrician and associate professor specializing in genetics, was at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Washington D.C. when she heard two speakers that forever changed her work with medical students. Dr. Beth Pletcher “I went to two talks on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that were so mind-boggling to me that I decided on my drive back to New Jersey that I had to do something about it,”says Pletcher, director of the Division...
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Nicholson Foundation Funding Efforts to Address ACEs and Build Resilience in New Jersey on Multiple Fronts
Since 2018, The Nicholson Foundation has been working hard to make New Jersey a leader among states in how it addresses, treats, and prevents Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)—traumatic events that can cause children lifelong physical, mental, and social damage. Over the past two years, The Nicholson Foundation has invested $3.5 million in efforts that directly prevent ACEs or build resilience to their effects and complementary programs and services that support healthy child development...
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Nashville’s Purposeful Twist on ACEs: All Children Excel
In 2015, the pieces that became ACE Nashville began to fall into place. A five-year Community Health Improvement Plan included the support of mental and emotional health as one of its three goals. A core team of individuals from the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee and the Family Center, a non-profit focused on breaking generational cycles of child trauma, began to meet weekly. And a citywide “consensus workshop” in April of that year—drawing 44...
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Self-Healing Communities Model, Co-Hosted with CTIPP, Second in a series
Self-Healing Communities Model, co hosted with CTIPP Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, 3-4:00 ET (Noon-1:00 PT) Second in a series on state-to-state best practices featuring the self-healing community model Self-Healing Community Model , Washington, developed networks that promoted collaboration across sectors and empowered local leaders to think about whole systems. The use of data helped prioritize efforts and learn what was working. Beyond Washington State, numerous other states are using the...
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NJ DCF Commissioner shares thoughts on National Day of Racial Healing
Dear ACEs Connection community, Today is the 5th Annual National Day of Racial Healing. This commemoration was established in 2017 by leaders in social services, faith-based organizations, government and private corporations from around the country to raise awareness and to recognize the need for racial reconciliation. These last several months have certainly shown us that equity among races is a goal not yet realized. The pandemic has disproportionately impacted individuals and families of...
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Healing-Centered Engagement Event
Healing-Centered Engagement Learn more about a new pilot program to help NJ schools address adversity and trauma NJPSA/FEA invites all public school superintendents, school and teacher leaders, and family/community organizations to attend an Information Session on February 4 to learn about an exciting and innovative initiative. In partnership with over 100 education and community leaders across the state, the NJPSA/FEA-led team has researched and designed a school framework to address adult...
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NJ Takes Another Step to Support Youth and Address Racial Equity in Juvenile Justice System
December 22, 2020 The significance of Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal’s directive to further reform the juvenile justice system is worth highlighting. Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) views this directive, which takes effect January 11, 2021, as another step towards building a juvenile justice system that gives youth the support they need as well as addresses racial equity. A key function of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate youth, rather than act punitively, and...
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NJ ACES ACTION PLAN SOCIAL MEDIA KIT
We’re asking for your help to spread awareness about the ACEs Action Plan. Below are links to graphics and a video for download, suggested post copy for social media and flyers that can be shared digitally or printed out for display. Please join us in sharing these materials across your social media accounts, via email, websites, newsletters or blog posts. Graphics can be downloaded here: https://www.nj.gov/dcf/news/publications/aces.html Remember to use #ResilientNJ and/or #ACEsAction...
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What Trauma Taught Me About Resilience | Charles Hunt | TEDxCharlotte
On October 28th over 1,000 people assembled in the Dale F. Halton Theater at CPCC for TEDx Charlotte 2016. The event has grown in popularity every year and 2016 was no exception. Attendees came looking for ideas worth spreading and to hear thought provoking talks. Few left disappointed. There was one talk in particular that stood out to me and most everyone I have spoken to since. That talk, “What Trauma Taught Me About Resilience” was delivered by Charles Hun t, the founder of the Audacity...
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PreventingACES.pdf
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Black history explains why COVID-19 has ravaged that community | Opinion
By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist By Hamid Shaaban Black History Month is often observed by commemorating Black excellence and honoring the remarkable achievements and contributions of Black people in the United States and around the world. This month, I propose to all my colleagues in healthcare and medicine to promote and advance education about the history of medical racism. That history is Black history and it is often neglected and remains largely unacknowledged. It’s important to...
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Ernie Davis becomes the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy
‘Winning the Heisman Trophy is something you just dream about. You never think it could happen to you’ Ernie Davis, a two-time All-American halfback at Syracuse University, lived a short life as a result of leukemia. He died at age 23 in 1963, but managed to lead his high school basketball team to a 52-game winning streak, help Syracuse win its only national football title and become the No. 1 pick in the 1961 NFL draft. On Dec. 6, 1961, he became the first African-American to win the...
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Doug Williams - First Black Quarterback to Win Super Bowl XXII
On January 31st, 1988 Doug Williams made history. But before that historic day, Williams was already a history-maker. One of the greatest HBCU athletes of all time, Doug Williams career started as a Freshman at Grambling State University under legendary head coach Eddie Robinson. Williams was a four-year starter for GSU, leading the Tigers to a 36-7 record, three Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) titles and was awarded the Black College Player of the Year twice. 1977 Williams finished...
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How are law enforcement leaders using ACEs science to change policing?
Eleven years ago, Pennsylvania Executive Deputy Attorney General Robert Reed learned about the landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences Study , which linked childhood trauma to a higher risk of aggression, substance abuse, suicide and many life-threatening mental and physical diseases later in life. For him, it was a revelation. “The [ACE Study] gave me the language to understand what I felt, but didn’t have the language to express,” Reed said. “I had been in law enforcement for 30 years and...
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Happy Birthday Alice Walker
Alice Walker Alice Walker is one of the most admired African American writers working today. She has written at length on issues of race and gender, and is most famous for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in Eatonton Georgia, on February the 9th, 1944, just before the end of World War II, Alice Malsenior Walker was the eighth of eight children to Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Winnie Lee Walker. Her father, who was, in...
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New Jersey's Own Whitney Houston
Today marks nine years since we lost an icon, the indelible mark Whitney Houston left on this world continues on today! With over 200 million combined album, singles and videos sold worldwide during her career with Arista Records, Whitney Houston has established a benchmark for superstardom that will quite simply never be eclipsed in the modern era. She is a singer’s singer who has influenced countless other vocalists female and male. Music historians cite Whitney’s record-setting...
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Dr. Natalia Tanner was the first African American board certified pediatrician in Detroit, Michigan.
Dr. Natalia M. Tanner, M.D: The first African American to be accepted into the residency program at the University of Chicago. The first African American woman fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The first African American on the staff of Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. The first woman and African American to serve as president of the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Natalia M. Tanner, M.D. built a long and distinguished career in pediatrics.
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On this day the first black professional basketball team "The Renaissance" was organized.
The New York Rens were the first all-black fully professional African-American owned basketball team, formed in Harlem in 1923. That year, basketball manager Robert “Bob” Douglas made a deal with Harlem real estate developer William Roach, the owner of the new Renaissance Ballroom and Casino. Douglas owned and managed an all-black basketball team called the Spartan Braves, which was a leading contender for the black national championship title. His basketball club had no home court. The...
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Rutgers launches research center for infant, toddler care policy
PATRICK LAVERY | NJ1015 NEW BRUNSWICK — A new offshoot of the National Institute for Early Education Research headquartered at Rutgers University, the Infant and Toddler Policy Research Center has been created to put a sharper focus on what New Jersey can do better to help children, specifically in their first three years of life, and support their parents and caregivers. NIEER founder and senior co-director W. Steven Barnett, a Rutgers professor, said every year of a child's life matters,...
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Racial Equity and Philanthropy
“... Philanthropy is overlooking leaders of color who have the most lived experience with and understanding of the problems we are trying to solve.”
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Patricia Bath - Pioneer Ophthalmologist - Inventor of laser cataract surgery
Patricia Bath was the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology in 1973. Two years later, she became the first female faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. In 1976, Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which established that "eyesight is a basic human right." In 1986, Bath invented the Laserphaco Probe, improving treatment for cataract patients. She patented the device in 1988, becoming...
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Hiram Rhodes Revels
Hiram Rhodes Revels representing Mississippi became the first African American to be sworn into United States Senate on February 25, 1870. Revels served as a Republican representing the state of Mississippi from February 25, 1870 until March 3, 1871. He was born on September 27, 1827 in Fayetteville, North Carolina to free African Americans. Revels worked as an ordained Methodist minister and served as a high school principal in Baltimore, Maryland. English: “First African American Senator...
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Black History NJ: The Complete Series
Jersey Joe Walcott Arnold Raymond Cream, aka Jersey Joe Walcott, was born in Merchantville, NJ, on Jan. 31, 1914. He held the record for the oldest heavyweight champion for more than four decades. His father, an immigrant from Barbados, died when Walcott was 15, which forced him to go to work to provide for his mother and younger siblings. At 16-years-old, he began boxing professionally and adopted Jersey Joe Walcott as his moniker… Carla Harris Montclair resident Carla Harris is an author,...
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Private First Class James Anderson, Jr.
The first African American U.S. Marine to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, Private First Class James Anderson, Jr. died on February 28, 1967 during an unconscionable act of heroism. he Medal of Honor, America’s highest military decoration was posthumously awarded on August 21, 1967 to Anderson for sacrificing his life for his fellow soldiers by grasping a grenade and shielding the explosion with his body to protect their lives. The official Citation was: “For conspicuous gallantry...
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N.J. schools must teach about unconscious bias, economic inequality, new law says By Adam Clark | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
New Jersey schools must begin age-appropriate lessons about diversity and inclusion as early as kindergarten under a new law signed Monday by Gov. Phil Murphy. The law, which several Republican lawmakers vocally opposed, calls on schools to promote “economic diversity, equity, inclusion, tolerance, and belonging in connection with gender and sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, disabilities, and religious tolerance.” It also asks schools to “examine the impact that unconscious bias and...
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Building a Community Partnership in a Pandemic: NJ Pediatric Residency Advocacy Collaborative Christin Traba, Shilpa Pai, Sara Bode and Benjamin Hoffman
Abstract: The New Jersey Pediatric Residency Advocacy Collaborative (NJPRAC) is a statewide collaborative with faculty leads from each of the 10 New Jersey pediatric residency programs. The 2 major goals of the collaborative were to build community partnerships between pediatric residency programs and local organizations and develop a core advocacy curriculum. In this article, we focus on how the NJPRAC built community partnerships with Family Success Centers (FSCs) across the state over the...
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Adverse Childhood Experiences: Inside NJ's Plan to Address a Perennial Harm
Last month New Jersey unveiled a unique action plan to help families and communities protect against and heal from the effects of adverse childhood experiences that can cause harm to individuals and families for generations. After a year of living under intense pandemic pressures, the need has likely never been so great. Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, impact four of ten youngsters in New Jersey across racial and economic lines according to a 2019 report . These traumas – such as...
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For Your Consideration
That Is Not How Your Brain Works Forget these scientific myths to better understand your brain and yourself. T he 21st century is a time of great scientific discovery. Cars are driving themselves. Vaccines against deadly new viruses are created in less than a year. The latest Mars Rover is hunting for signs of alien life. But we’re also surrounded with scientific myths: outdated beliefs that make their way regularly into news stories. Being wrong is a normal and inevitable part of the...
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Juliette Hampton
Healthy racial identity development among older white youth is a bit more complex. Often, white students must come to understand that society attaches meaning to their whiteness and that they have a choice about how to be white in a multicultural society. The American Civil Rights Movement was a movement of the people. Black and white, male and female, Jew and Christian, rich and poor -- ordinary people who came together across differences to advance this nation's core value of equality and...
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Century-Old Summer Camp for NYC Kids to Close Amid YMCA's $100M Financial Hole. $5 million needed to save camp
I've been with DCF for nearly 15 years and for the first 10 years or so I was a child protection worker, and while in that role, I sent numerous children to YMCA Camp Huguenot . The experiences had by my kids at Camp Huguenot was LIFE CHANGING! It saddens me to know that so many children will no longer be able to attend Camp Huguenot and reconnect with friends especially during these trying times. The Greater New York YMCA said that because of pandemic losses to the tune of $100 million, the...
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OYLER - Can a school save a community?
Can a school save a community? Oyler profiles how a "community school" helped fuel a dramatic turnaround in one of Cincinnati's most poverty-stricken neighborhoods, part of a growing national movement to help poor children succeed by meeting their basic health, social, and nutritional needs at school. Before 2006, very few kids from the Lower Price Hill area finished high school, much less went to college. The neighborhood is Urban Appalachian--an insular community with roots in the coal...
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Love Them First: Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary
An amazing must watch documentary. With unprecedented access over the course of a year this feature-length documentary, Love Them First — Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary, follows the determination of a charismatic north Minneapolis elementary school principal, Mauri Melander Friestleben, as she sets out to undo history. Not only does the state have the largest achievement gap between black and white children in the United States, Friestleben faced another seemingly impossible obstacle,...
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‘Whole Generations Of Fathers’ Lost As COVID-19 Kills Young Latino Men In NJ BY KAREN YI | Gothamist
After having a light cough for three days last spring, Miguel Mestiza Valderrabano called his partner Ana Maria Lorenzo to say that, when she got home from work, he planned to go to the hospital. He would never make it, and the mental image of his 32-year-old lifeless body on their living room floor still haunts her. “I couldn’t believe that had happened in minutes,” Lorenzo said. She had just arrived home from her cleaning job—her first assignment in weeks after she’d lost work during the...
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UNITY - Native American youth
UNITY’s Mission is to foster the spiritual, mental, physical, and social development of American Indian and Alaska Native youth, and to help build a strong, unified, and self-reliant Native America through greater youth involvement. UNITY Defined: UNITY is a national network organization promoting personal development, citizenship, and leadership among Native American youth. UNITY has a long (40+ years) and impressive track record of empowering and serving American Indian and Alaska Native...