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The desire to see other ACEs initiatives grow and flourish was evident at a recent meeting of the Resilient Columbus County (North Carolina) ACEs initiative when Mebane Boyd, executive director of the New Hanover Resiliency Task Force (also in North Carolina), shared with the Columbus County and neighboring Pender County groups how New Hanover created and works on its strategic plan. In the spirit of sharing, Boyd agreed to let ACEs Connection post the strategic plan and the video of the...

After his roughest days in a New York City emergency room, physician Matthew Bai feels his whole body relax when he sees his wife and 17-month-old daughter. “My light at the end of the tunnel is going home to family,” Bai says. When Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital started to overflow with COVID-19 patients in late March, however, Bai and his wife decided she should take their toddler and stay with her parents in New Jersey. The risk of spreading the virus to his family was too great. Now...

The National Indian Health Board, in collaboration with CDC, has launched a new resource hub! Many Tribal individuals, families, and communities have been impacted by childhood experiences causing physical and mental health adversities throughout the lifespan. However, with understanding and effort, individuals and communities can confront Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) for positive health outcomes. This information hub, launched by the National Indian Health Board includes a "resource...

I have just attended two Virtual meetings about public health. Public health agencies have been under funded for years. The covid19 crisis has impacted those institutions heavily. However many Public Health agencies are ACEs aware. They can be useful allies for ACEs activities. What follows is from the Fighting For Our Lives forums follow up communication. The recordings from the forum series are available at the following links. There is a brief registration form before you can view the...

By Tatiana Sanchez, San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2020 Elaine Shelly has lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years. But she said she still panics whenever she has to see a new neurologist because of racial discrimination she’s experienced in the past. Even getting a proper diagnosis for her illness was a battle. “I’d go to these neurologists who would tell me that Black people don’t get M.S. and that I must be mentally ill,” said Shelly, 63, of San Leandro. A former print journalist,...

Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General, has a lot in common with the vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris—Jamaican heritage, surname, home state—and a commitment to addressing ACEs and toxic stress. As reported in the New Yorker article by Paul Tough, “The Poverty Clinic,” Dr. Harris told Kamala Harris, then San Francisco district attorney, about ACEs in 2008 and in response, she offered to help. District Attorney Harris then introduced her to professor of child and...

By Miranda Hester, August 21, 2020, Contemporary Pediatrics. Burnout is often seen as something that happens to physicians who have been practicing for years. A new study looks at how burnout impacts trainee physicians. The topic of burnout and how to prevent or ameliorate it has been discussed for many years. That discussion may reach a fever pitch as the COVID-19 pandemic rages and increases many stressors. A report in JAMA Network Open looks at what’s behind burnout in trainee physicians.

By Rachael Zimlich, August 21, 2020, Contemporary Pediatrics. Improving neighborhood conditions in disadvantaged areas can help improve health outcomes, but these improvements may be modest and take a long time to see. Still, any improvement is a good improvement, concludes a new study. The report , 1 published in Pediatrics , reviews a collaboration by hospitals and community leadership in Ohio, where efforts were aimed at improving health outcomes by making communities better places to...

A patient-centered approach to opioid tapers must account for the reality that many people who are given a prescription for an opioid to treat pain have significant mental health conditions—for which opioids act as a psychotropic agent. An opioid taper must therefore address psychological trauma, in particular.

Monica McCasklill, left, and her daughter Kena Johnson, at their home in Greenwood, Missisppi. They respectively lost their grandmother and great grandmother, Ethel Huntley, to Covid-19. Huntley lived in a nearby nursing home and the family allege failings in her primary care. Photograph: Rory Doyle/The Guardian. By Oliver Laughland, The Guardian, August 5, 2020 Poor access to healthcare, failed political leadership and the endurance of segregation and racism have contributed to a surge in...

The organization Zero To Three estimates that in the U.S., a child is taken into the child welfare system every six seconds. “Many of society’s most intractable problems can be traced back to childhood adversity. Being in the child welfare system increases the likelihood of more adversity and criminality. Baby court is a proven approach to healing the trauma of both child and parent, and breaking the cycle of maltreatment,” says Mimi Graham, Ed.D ., director of the Florida State University...

Perspective by Leonard E. Egede, M.D., and Rebekah J. Walker, Ph.D. July 22, 2020, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2023616 . *Author Affiliations: From the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, and the Center for Advancing Population Science, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Current protests throughout the United States are highlighting the history of marginalization of and discrimination against Black Americans, including 250 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow laws,...