Tagged With "abcnews.go.com"
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A fast, easy way for pediatricians to screen kids for ACEs...and other health issues
Last November, the California Department of Managed Care gave its stamp of approval to a new version of Whole Child Assessment 2.0 , a tool that screens for children’s adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). It was recommended as part of recently passed legislation calling for trauma screening for children in California. But the Whole Child Assessment 2.0 (WCA) does more. It also queries patients about other critical safety and health issues, including whether they have enough to eat, whether...
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A Framework for Child Health Services: Promoting optimal health, development, and well-being for all children [chdi.org]
CHDI and Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health outlined a joint vision for improving child and population health in A Framework for Child Health Services: Promoting optimal health, development, and well-being for all children . This 2019 Framework builds on the original Framework for Child Health Services published in 2009. It highlights progress on implementing recommendations from the original Framework and puts forth new recommendations for integrating child health...
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A Guide to Providing Telehealth During the COVID-19 Crisis
Many of us in the mental health field are being thrust into unfamiliar territory as clinicians in the midst of the COVID-19 response. We either risk personal health (and the health of our clients) by seeing people in person, or needing to utilize technologies that we may be unfamiliar with. Further, those technologies have fluid legal/ethical standards (and is even more fluid at present to accommodate the pandemic), and which require different skill sets that in-person therapy. I am...
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A Guide to Providing Telehealth During the COVID-19 Crisis
ACEs in Pediatrics community manager's note: Although this post by Daren Casagrande is geared toward mental health providers, I thought it had material that could be useful to a wider swath of health care providers. Please comment below if you have any questions or suggestions. --- Laurie Udesky Many of us in the mental health field are being thrust into unfamiliar territory as clinicians in the midst of the COVID-19 response. We either risk personal health (and the health of our clients) by...
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A Kaiser pediatrician, wise to ACEs science for years, finally gets to use it
Dr. Suzanne Frank has known about the impact of childhood adversity on young lives for decades. She’s seen the fallout in the faces of young people huddled in beds at a children’s shelter where she worked years ago. She’s seen it as the regional child abuse services and champion for the Permanente Medical Group. And she’s seen it in hospital examination rooms where, as a member of the Santa Clara County’s Sexual Assault Response Team, she’s been called in to examine shell-shocked children...
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A Pediatrician's View Of Paid Parental Leave [NPR.org]
Paternity leave can make a big difference in a dad's long-term engagement with the child, doctors find. Paid family leave also fosters breastfeeding and reduces the incidence of maternal depression. As part of All Things Considered's series Stretched: Working Parents' Juggling Act , NPR talked with Dr. Benard Dreyer , a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at the New York University School of Medicine and president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, to get a better sense of what the...
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A pediatrician's view: What will proposed GOP cuts do to Philly's most vulnerable? [Philly.com]
It’s a rainy weekday morning in North Philadelphia, and once again, as I have been doing for the last 15 years, I sign on to our electronic health-records database and prepare for the 26 young patients, ages 1 month to 20 years, on my schedule. It’s a few days after the White House’s 2018 budget proposal, “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” was released last month. [For more of this story, written by Daniel R. Taylor, go to ...
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A Pediatrician Tells His Former Patient: ‘I Am Disappointed in Myself’ [theatlantic.com]
“Like so many rape survivors in this country living through this particular moment in history,” Deborah Copaken wrote last week, “I have been so brought to my knees by this latest allegation that I, too, was inspired to speak out.” After Copaken described her experience, her former pediatrician got in touch with her, and shared his letter with The Atlantic. [For more on this story, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/archive/2018/09/pediatrician-i-didnt-discuss-sexuality-patients/571516/ ]
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A tough childhood has a long-term effect on health [businesslive.co.za]
US-based pediatrician Nadine Burke-Harris had a glut of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) cases at the clinic where she worked in Bayview, a poor area in San Francisco. She felt in her bones that these cases didn’t come out of the blue, and were directly linked to high levels of toxic stress in the community. Toxic stress, experienced through consistent exposure to violence, abuse and the consequences of poverty and inequality, has a lasting effect on the brain, notably in the...
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AAP Announces New Initiative to Confront Violence in Children's Lives [AAP.org]
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) today announces a new initiative in the wake of the recent killings of two black men in St. Paul, Minn., and Baton Rouge, La., and of five police officers in Dallas. The AAP will convene a group of pediatrician experts to identify new approaches to protect children, adolescents and young adults from the epidemic of violence occurring in their everyday lives. The initiative's members, agenda and goals will be shared in the coming days, and will address...
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AAP Federal Affairs Update
One week from today is Tuesday, Nov. 4: Election Day. Now is the time to speak up for children at the ballot box by casting your vote ! This year, all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 36 members of...
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AAP Statement in Response to Tear Gas Being Used Against Children at the U.S. Southern Border [aap.org]
“Images and news reports of tear gas being used on children and families seeking asylum at our border have stunned and shaken pediatricians just as they have so many others across the country. Our objection to this type of treatment of children and their parents is grounded in our own policy: “The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all immigrant children and families seeking safe haven are treated with dignity and respect to protect their health and well-being. Children who are...
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Abused as a small boy. Now what? [BridgeMI.com]
When the fidgety, anxious, 5-year-old boy from northern Michigan came in about a year ago to see pediatrician Tina Hahn, it was soon apparent to her this was a case medication alone would not solve. “He was trying to hide under the chair. He looked panicked and overwhelmed. He was in that fight or flight mode,” said Hahn, who was then in practice in Alpena. The boy, she learned, had been taken away from his mother when he was 3, from a home rife with drug use, alcoholism and severe physical...
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ACE-Aha Moments & Parenting: Meet Aprel Phelps Downey
Aprel Phelps Downey What was your ACEs Aha moment? When did you first hear about ACEs and what impact did/does it have on you? How do ACEs impact you as a parent? How is your parenting impacted by past trauma? What’s been most helpful to you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What’s been most challenging for you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What has parenting taught you? What have you learned? How do you manage complex family relationships? What inspires/encourages and helps you? I know...
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ACE Fact Sheets to Give Your Doctors, Patients & Beyond (free downloads)
I was first inspired to create a fact sheet summarizing the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) after reading a comment in “Got Your ACE score?” A reader wished she had a form to give her doctor that documented the vast body of evidence explaining how early trauma increases risk for chronic physical and mental health conditions and much more.
I could relate.
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ACEs, biomarkers and the cost of adversity
How useful and necessary are biomarkers in telling the story of how toxic stress from adverse childhood experiences and resilience can impact a child’s long-term health? In the introduction to an article in the journal BioEssays , Dr. Kathryn Ridout, a Kaiser Permanente San Jose psychiatrist, and her co-authors examine what is known about two biomarkers and quote data on child maltreatment and its economic burden over time that says it all. “When totaling the costs of health care, child...
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ACEs Research Corner — February 2020
Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site — abuseresearch.info — that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she's posting the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs science. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Kambeitz C, Klug MG, Greenmyer J, Popova S, Burd L. Association of adverse childhood experiences and neurodevelopmental disorders in people with fetal alcohol...
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ACEs Screening
This is a collection of resources regarding screening for ACEs . This list aims to give a broad overview and is not all-inclusive. We welcome suggestions; if you have any, please comment below! This resource list is organized in alphabetical order. Pediatric Campus in Santa Rosa ACEs screeners, 2019 Description: ACEs screeners for 4m-11y and 12y-18y in English and Spanish are in the attachments below. Whole Child Assessment (WCA) , 2019 Description: The Whole Child Assessment (WCA) is a...
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ACEs screening in CA — a Q and A with Dr. Dayna Long
Last year, the California Department of Health Care Services rolled out its plans for universal screening for trauma among its pediatric and adult Medicaid population. Beginning January 1, 2020, California physicians were able to receive an incentive payment of $29 for each pediatric patient screened for ACEs using the PEARLs ( Pediatrics Adverse Childhood and Resilience Study) tool. Dr. Dayna Long talked with ACEs Connection staff reporter Laurie Udesky about ACEs science, what led to the...
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Add the ACEs Connection “shortcut” to your phone and help make the world more ACEs Science aware. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!
Stay current with ACEs Connection -- and easily share stories via social media and email -- by accessing ACEs Connection and/or your community’s home page on your phone. Adding an ACEs Connection shortcut to your phone works for iPhone and Android systems and makes staying logged in, checking in, and sharing out quick and easy, on-the-go! Community managers: Share this post with community members, as using the shortcut is a great way to help your members stay abreast of what’s going on! On...
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Addressing Child Trauma at the Mexican Border [MedPageToday.com]
On the day after the 2016 presidential election, a group of pediatricians arrived at the Customs and Border Protection processing center here. Their host was Marsha Griffin, MD, a pediatrician who practices in this border town and is co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Immigrant Health Special Interest Group. Griffin had been at work with two fellow AAP members on a policy statement for the academy calling on the government to stop separating families who've been apprehended...
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Adverse childhood experiences increase risk of mental illness, but community support can offer protection [medicalxpress.com]
People who have experienced abuse, neglect and other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as living with domestic violence during their childhood are at much greater risk of mental illness throughout life. Findings from a new national study across Wales found adults who had suffered four or more types of ACE were almost 10 times more likely to have felt suicidal or self-harmed than those who had experienced none. The study by Public Health Wales and Bangor University also found that...
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After 5-year journey to integrate ACEs science, Santa Rosa, CA, pediatric clinic is trauma-informed, from head to toe
Dr. Meredith Kieschnick was among the first physicians in the U.S. to hear the term, "adverse childhood experiences". That was in 1998, early on in her career as a pediatrician, when the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) published its initial findings in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine . “I attended a conference at which (Dr. Vincent) Felitti spoke,” she recalls. Felitti, at that time director of the Health Appraisal Center at Kaiser Permanente...
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All hands on deck (from a distance): remote care for traumatized moms and babies
Dear colleague, Coronavirus is forcing providers and allied professionals serving mothers and babies to make unprecedented decisions. Should pregnant women needing care go through our hospital quarantine entrance? Should moms deliver without partners, family or doulas present? Be sent home early before key screenings or jaundice treatment are completed? To make matters worse, our systems aren't ready for basic remote care of mothers and infants now "socially distanced". Prenatal, post-partum...
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Allentown Headstart program focuses on kids dealing with trauma [whyy.org]
In a space that used to be an abandoned state hospital, Lora Lesak has created an early childhood classroom filled with natural light and comfortable chairs — a room designed to feel like a home. As director of Developmental Health Services for Allentown’s Community Services for Children, she says that’s exactly what children who’ve experienced trauma need. “We have gotten children that have needed to remain in the hospital for two weeks to be weaned of substances — whether it’s cocaine,...
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America’s Workplaces Are Hostile to Families [BillMoyers.com]
Childbearing gets a little more bearable for working women this year, with various new state and city policies to accommodate the needs of pregnant and parenting workers. In several states, including Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota and West...
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Anger overlooked as feature of postnatal mood disorders [sciencedaily.com]
Women in the postpartum period should be screened for anger in addition to depression and anxiety, new research from the University of British Columbia suggests. Although anger has been recognized as an element of postpartum mood problems for some women, it has not been well studied and is not included in the widely used Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale screening tool. In a review of existing research, UBC nursing PhD student Christine Ou found anger to be a significant feature in...
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Announcing the Parenting with ACEs Monthly Chat Series!
I'm thrilled to announce our NEW Live Chat series!!! Starting in May, once a month, we will have a live Chat Event. It will take online in the Parenting with ACEs Group the second Tuesday of the month at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST). We'll learn from our featured guests (below) about ACE-related issues. We'll have discussions and share experiences, stories, and resources with each other. Here is who and what we have scheduled for 2017. 2017 Monthly Chat Schedule / Time is Always: @ 10 AM PST (1...
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Association of behavioral health factors and social determinants of health with high and persistently high healthcare costs [Preventive Medicine Reports]
Editor's note: A common interest among ACEs in Pediatrics members is finding research that shows how ACE scores correlate with high cost health care utilization. This study in Preventive Medicine Reports looks into that correlation. " To our knowledge, no other studies have examined the e ff ects of ACEs on utilization and cost, independent of medical condition acuity. ACEs exposure emerged as the sole factor independently associated with both initial and persistent high-cost status, aside...
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Baltimore enlists doulas to help bring infant mortality rate down [BaltimoreSun.com]
When Kendra Nelson was in labor with her second child, small gestures from a doula helped her get through the strongest and most painful contractions. The woman held Nelson’s hand and spoke words of encouragement. She guided Nelson through breathing exercises and pulled her hair back in a scrunchie to keep her comfortable. [For more of this story, written by Andrea K. McDaniels, go to http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-doula-infant-mortality-20170725-story.html]
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Baltimore uses trauma research to improve life for poor parents and their children [WashingtonPost.com]
One day, when she was 14 and feeling ill, Daylesha Brown’s mother took her to a Baltimore hospital and did not return for her. Child Protective Services (CPS) placed her in a group home and she was forced to move to other homes for the next three years. “My mother, she pushed me away,” Brown, now 23, said softly. “I was always getting in trouble with my mother.” So last year when Brown discovered her daughter, Sa-Maji, had lead poisoning, a lingering problem in Baltimore where the rate of...
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Sesame Street will help Memphis kids with their ACEs
(Posted in the Commercial Appeal on December 5, 2018 ) Every child deserves to grow up with a strong connection to a caring adult and a loving family. But for one in four kids in Shelby County, a supportive relationship with a parent figure isn’t so easy to come by. The legacy of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — ranging from physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; the loss of a parent through illness, death, divorce, or incarceration; or domestic violence...
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Sesame Workshop to Address Refugee Children's Trauma With Help From Elmo and $100 Million [blogs.edweek.org]
The Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee, a refugee aid group, won a first-of-its kind $100 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Wednesday for an ambitious education and outreach program designed to address the needs of displaced Syrian children. The program was selected for the five-year grant from a list of finalists for the foundation's 100&Change competition, which asked organizations to propose "bold solutions to critical problems of...
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Solano County's (CA) ACEs initiative, a robust community effort, makes room for input from all
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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Strengths-based Approaches to Screening Families for Health-Related Social Needs in the Healthcare Setting [Center for the Study of Social Policy]
How do you screen families to determine whether they have enough to eat or if they feel safe in their homes or communities without alienating them? In this new brief, authors Dr. Renee Boynton-Jarrett and JoHannah Flacks describe strength-based approaches to screening for health related social needs.
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Stress is hurting kids’ health. California’s new surgeon general has a plan to help [qz.com]
The US medical system isn’t particularly good at preventing illness . Once someone is sick, doctors hopefully know how to treat them. But historically, there’s been far less focus on preventing people from needing treatment in the first place. That’s finally starting to change, thanks to a growing movement in the health-care community that looks to address the environmental and behavioral causes of many common diseases. Prevention, experts say, will save money (though it’s unclear how much )...
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STUDENT VOICE: ‘What haunts me is how easily everyone could picture us behind bars’ [hechingerreport.org]
In sixth grade, I went on a field trip to jail. Picture us: a bunch of Latino and African American kids sitting in a prison cell. I’ve never been able to shake the memory. Here I was, an 11-year-old Latina from Jersey City, and our teachers were telling us, dead straight: This could be your future. I certainly got the message. What haunts me is how easily everyone could picture us behind bars. We could picture it, too. When it came time for high school, my dad made the decision to move us to...
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Study Finds Children Separated From Their Parents At The Border Experience High Levels Of Anxiety [texasstandard.org]
Texas’ southern border is ground zero in the nation’s immigration debate. We’ve covered concerns that the Trump administration’s family separation policy could have lasting traumatic effects on the migrant children separated from their parents at the border. A recent study looked at the health impact on kids who are part of families of mixed legal status, such as the roughly 1,800 kids in the Rio Grande Valley who had a parent deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year. Tania...
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Study indicates exercise sharpens the young adult brain [MedicalXpress.com]
Regular physical activity improves brain function even in young adults considered in their prime and at the height of cognitive ability, according to a new University of Otago study. A body of research already exists showing aerobic exercise...
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Study unearths patterns in San Jose homeless population's ACE scores
Photo by Terabass/ CC-SA-3.0 It was around 2010 that Dr. Angela Bymaster was seeing a disturbing pattern in the histories of her adult patients. She already knew that patients who saw her at the Valley Homeless Health Care Program in San Jose, CA, where she worked at the time, were homeless or recently homeless. What was most troubling to Bymaster was knowing that their current precarious existence could have been prevented. Dr. Angela Bymaster “Over and over and over again I was hearing the...
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Talking to Children About Tragedies & Other News Events [healthychildren.org]
After any disaster, parents and other adults struggle with what they should say and share with children and what not to say or share with them. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) encourages parents, teachers, child care providers, and others who work closely with children to filter information about the crisis and present it in a way that their child can accommodate, adjust to, and cope with. No matter what age or developmental stage the child is, parents can start by asking a child...
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Teaching Parenting Skills At Doctor Visits Helps Children's Behavior [NPR.org]
As researchers have come to understand how poverty and its stresses influence children's brain development, they've begun untangling how that can lead to increased behavior problems and learning difficulties for disadvantaged kids. Rather than trying to treat those problems, NYU child development specialists Adriana Weisleder and Alan Mendelsohn want to head them off. They say they've found a way: Working with low-income parents when they bring babies and young children to the pediatrician.
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Teen Bullies And Their Victims Both Face A Higher Risk Of Suicide [NPR.org]
Bullying and cyberbullying are major risk factors for teen suicide. And both the bullies and their victims are at risk. That's according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics that urges pediatricians and family doctors to routinely screen teenagers for suicide risks. "Pediatricians need to be aware of the problem overall," says Benjamin Shain , a child and adolescent psychiatrist and lead author of the report published online Monday in the journalPediatrics. "They should be...
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The CHIP Program Is Beloved. Why Is Its Funding in Danger? [nytimes.com]
WILMINGTON, Del. — Laquita Gardner, a sales manager at a furniture rental store here, was happy to get a raise recently except for one problem. It lifted her income just enough to disqualify her and her two young sons from Medicaid, the free health insurance program for the poor. She was relieved to find another option was available for the boys: the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, that covers nearly nine million children whose parents earn too much for Medicaid, but not...
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The Economic Cost of ACEs in Tennessee (SycamoreInstituteTN.org)
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can increase a person’s risk of health, social, and economic problems throughout life. In 2017, ACEs among Tennessee adults led to an estimated $5.2 billion in direct medical costs and lost productivity from employees missing work. ACEs are associated with risky health behaviors and poorer health outcomes even after accounting for other factors. Over half of adult Tennesseans reported at least one ACE between 2014 and 2017, and about 17% had experienced 4...
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The hazards of out-of-home care for children experiencing adverse home environments [thelancet.com]
There is mounting evidence that children who experience early adversity are at heightened risk for developing physical and psychological sequelae later in childhood; moreover, such sequelae can be biologically embedded, impacting multiple biological systems (including the epigenome), thereby elevating the risk that these effects will persist into adulthood. Two common forms of adversity that affect tens of millions of children each year are maltreatment and removal from parental care and...
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The Lasting Effects of Bullying [PSMag.com]
The psychological effects of being bullied don't necessarily stop when the bullying does. That's the conclusion of a newly released study published in the journal Pediatrics. "Students who expressed more frequent peer victimization in fifth grade were more likely to have greater symptoms of depression in seventh grade, and a greater likelihood of using alcohol, marijuana, or tobacco in 10th grade," reports University of Delaware psychologist Valerie Earnshaw , the study's lead author. She...
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The Mindful Child [Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
It’s long been known that meditation helps children feel calmer, but new research is helping quantify its benefits for elementary school-age children. A 2015 study found that fourth- and fifth-grade students who participated in a four-month meditation program showed improvements in executive functions like cognitive control, working memory, cognitive flexibility — and better math grades. A study published recently in the journal Mindfulness found similar improvements in mathematics in fifth...