Blog

By Tina L. Cheng and Alison M. Conca-Cheng, Pediatrics, August 31, 2020 COVID-19 is a recent crisis. Racism is an enduring crisis which is inflamed in the presence of other crises. The Chinese word for "crisis” is composed of two characters, one signifying "danger" and the other, "opportunity." The pandemics of COVID-19 and racism present clear danger. Our duty is to make sense of the opportunity by learning, understanding, and taking action. In this issue of Pediatrics, Cheah et al.1...

By Howie Knoff, SmartBrief, August 31, 2020 Throughout this pandemic, the American public has sometimes had to choose between science and beliefs, between objective data and personal testimonials. And while the medical, social, economic and educational toll from the COVID-19 virus is unprecedented, some of the effects have been politicized by our leaders, and sensationalized by the press. Sadly, the latter has occurred when discussing the emotional status of our students as districts prepare...

Dr. Elisa Nicholas, a pediatrician and chief executive officer of TCC Family Health Clinics in Long Beach, California, relays an example of how the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the lives of the clinics’ patients. Most had already been struggling financially prior to the pandemic. “Both the mother and father came down with coronavirus,” said Nicholas. “Their child was in on a telephone visit with one of our doctors. They did not have any way to get food. They had no money to pay for...

Jessica Williams wants you to know that depressed kids don’t have a “look”. As the lead social worker in charge of the behavioral health screening protocol at Nemours/Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children, it’s her job to educate clinicians, staff, and families about the one thing they can do to identify kids in crisis: ask them the right questions. “Kids that appear to be depressed, whatever you think that might look like, they might not actually be depressed,” she explains. “And sometimes...

A patient came into the Goleta location of the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics pleading with people at the front desk to speak to Mayra Garcia, a wellness navigator at the clinic, despite not having an appointment. The clinic is part of a network of four clinics in the Santa Barbara region of California that serve mainly patients on Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, or patients who are uninsured. Mayra Garcia “She was crying. Her husband had been deported. She couldn’t pay the rent,...

By Rezvan Ameli, Ninet Sinaii, Colin P. West, et al., JAMA Network Open, August 25, 2020 Key Points Español 中文 (Chinese) Question Is a brief mindfulness-based program effective and feasible in reducing stress among health care professionals during work hours? Findings In this randomized clinical trial including 78 participants randomized to a 5-session (7.5-hour total) mindfulness program or a life-as-usual control, participants in the mindfulness program reported reduced stress and anxiety...

By David J. Schonfeld, Marlene Melzer-Lange, Andrew N. Hashikawa, et al., Pediatrics, August 2020 Abstract Children and adolescents should be included in exercises and drills to the extent that their involvement advances readiness to meet their unique needs in the event of a crisis and/or furthers their own preparedness or resiliency. However, there is also a need to be cautious about the potential psychological risks and other unintended consequences of directly involving children in live...

Loren McCullough, 8/26/20, positiveexperience.org/blog HOPE involves a change in mindset. For many of us, our professional training and inclinations lead us to discover risks, problems, and deficits. In this blog (the first from our new team member, Loren McCullough), we examine national data that points to severe problems with the food supply – as experienced by families. Hidden within the data, we also see evidence for hope. Family and community engagement have buffered some of these...

Thursday, September 3, 2020 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT | presented by Dr. Vincent J. Felitti *Priority will be given to Medi-Cal providers* The ACE Study reveals how typically unrecognized adverse childhood experiences are not only common, but causally underlie a number of the most common causes of adult social malfunction, biomedical disease, and premature death. Moreover, it enables one to see that the Public Health Problem is often an individual’s attempted Solution to childhood experiences...

By Chloe Yang, 8/19/20, positiveexperience.org/blog As the pandemic stretches far into the foreseeable future, with jobs, schooling, housing, and almost every other aspect of life a swirl of uncertainty, it is easy to fixate on the negative. Here at HOPE, we do not deny the devastating severity of the pandemic’s effect on lives across the nation. We do not deny Covid-19’s exacerbation of long-standing systemic inequities in healthcare, housing, education, employment, and more. However, we...

Interested SF Bay Area safety net organizations can apply for funding to participate in this three-year program on resilience and trauma-informed care.

Robin is a brilliant, passionate, and vocal school nurse with almost two decades of experience as a New Jersey school nurse in the Camden City School District. She is the Legislative Co-Chair for the New Jersey State School Nurses Association and she joined us last week for A Better Normal community discussion about back-to-school (or not) plans families are facing this school year. Robin serves as faculty in the School Nurse Certificate Program at Rutgers University-Camden School of Nursing...