Tagged With "health care"
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Doctor-patient role-playing featured in ACEs Connection webinar
On an ACEs Connection webinar on Monday, Dr. Andrew Seaman, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, showed how he navigates his students through the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). And, in an unusual twist for a webinar, Seaman and O’Nesha Cochran, a peer mentor with the Mental Health Association of Oregon, role-played doctor-patient interactions to show how to develop the skills to communicate with patients with high ACE scores. About 90 people...
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Doctor-patient role-playing featured in ACEs Connection webinar
On an ACEs Connection webinar on Monday, Dr. Andrew Seaman, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, showed how he navigates his students through the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). And, in an unusual twist for a webinar, Seaman and O’Nesha Cochran, a peer mentor with the Mental Health Association of Oregon, role-played doctor-patient interactions to show how to develop the skills to communicate with patients with high ACE scores. About 90 people...
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Doctors are burning out and trite ‘wellness’ measures aren’t helping [CenterForHealthJournalism.org]
“I'm already beat. The trick is to not let the caring get to you.” These were the words recently uttered by one of my physician colleagues, referring to the stresses of caring for patients in the world of modern health care. The weariness was clear over the phone. Without missing a step, I responded, “I know. Of course.” It took me weeks to realize that it might be concerning that I immediately empathized with her sense of being submerged and overpowered by an uncaring health care system.
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Doctors, Is It O.K. if We Talk About Why Finger-Wagging Isn’t Working? [nytimes.com]
Doctors give a lot of very good advice. Over the years, my primary care doctors have suggested better eating habits, more exercise, improved sleep hygiene, not carrying such a heavy shoulder bag, even exercises to improve my posture. The problem is, I am not sure I have ever made any changes in my behavior as a direct result. That would not come as a surprise to Ken Resnicow, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “Finger-wagging doesn’t work,” he said. “There’s...
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Documentary on Connection Between Foster Care, Homelessness and Human Trafficking [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
A new foster care documentary , Breaking the Cycle , explores exactly how intertwined the foster care system is with homelessness and human trafficking. Filmmaker Arzo Yusuf captured multiple perspectives from people with close connections to the pipeline of living in foster care to becoming homeless or being sexually exploited, including a former foster youth and professionals who work with young people in foster care. Personal accounts from former foster youth speak to the circumstances...
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Donna Jackson Nakazawa Chats Live with Jane Stevens & You: Nov. 14th
Featured Guest: @Donna Jackson Nakazawa Topic: Well-Being, Self-Care & ACEs Date: November 14th, 2017 Time: 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST Where: Here / Chats Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an winning researcher, writer and public speaker on health and family issues. She explores the intersection between neuroscience, immunology, and the deepest inner workings of the human heart. Her most recent book, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal , examines...
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Dozens of Kaiser Permanente pediatricians in Northern California screen three-year-olds for ACEs
Since August 2016, more than 300 three-year-olds who visited Kaiser Permanente’s pediatric clinics in Hayward and San Leandro have been screened for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as living with a family member who is an alcoholic or losing a parent to separation or divorce. But when the idea to screen toddlers and their families for ACEs was first broached at the Kaiser Permanente Hayward Medical Center, the staff were, in a word, “angsty,” says Dr. Paul Espinas, who led the...
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Dozens of stakeholders representing thousands of practitioners send public comments on Calif. ACEs-screening plan
Update: We posted this story on Tuesday evening and received a response from the Department of Health Care Services Wednesday that clarifies additional information. DHCS information Officer Katharine Weir said that subject to budget approval by the legislature and the governor: The reimbursement rate will be $29. Federally Qualified Health Centers will also be reimbursed for screening pediatric patients for trauma through Prop 56 funds and federal matching funds. In response to a question...
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Dr. Claudia Gold: Empathy & Listening as ACE-Informed Practice
"You are absolutely not doomed from having ACEs."
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Dr. Nadine Burke Harris Presents at SCVMC-Pediatric Grand Rounds
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris presented today at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center during Pediatric Grand Rounds to a full room (standing room only) of pediatricians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, public health professionals and allied medical staff. With the show of hands, many of us in the room were familiar with ACEs science and the health impacts of toxic stress. With ease, Dr. Burke Harris dove into great detail of our bodies response to toxic stress and the multitude of...
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Draft Recommendation on Child Maltreatment: Primary Care Interventions
Dear ACEs Community, The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has released a Draft Recommendation Statement on Child Maltreatment: Primary Care Interventions. Opportunity for public comment expires on June 18, 2018 at 8:00 PM EST. View the full Draft at: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/RecommendationStatementDraft/child-maltreatment-primary-care-interventions1#consider Here's an excerpt from the recommendation: In 2013, the USPSTF found...
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DULCE helps pediatricians in Oakland, CA, prevent toxic stress in newborns
On a recent day in early March, Laura Lopez met a former patient of hers in the waiting room of Highland Hospital’s pediatric clinic in Oakland, CA. The patient had forgotten her Medi-Cal card and called Lopez asking for help. But in the brief conversation, Lopez, a family specialist with the DULCE program, learned about some dire changes in the patient’s life. Laura Lopez “Without me even asking, she shared with me that she had separated from her partner, that she needs to apply for food...
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Early Bird registration ends Feb 2 for the AAP Trauma Informed Pediatric Provider Course
Early bird registration ends soon for the 2019 AAP Trauma Informed Pediatric Provider (TIPP) Course scheduled March 2-5, 2019 in San Antonio, TX. Learn from other pediatric healthcare providers about the recent science, evidence base and treatments of adversity, resiliency and toxic stress. AAP Past-President, Dr. Colleen Kraft, will deliver the keynote presentation Pediatricians as Leaders in Addressing Toxic Stress and Trauma in Children . For more information, a schedule of speakers and...
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Employing an Adaptive Leadership Framework to Childhood Adversity Screening [pediatrics.aapublications.org]
By Susannah Stein, Arin Swerlick, and Binny Chokshi, Pediatrics, January 2020 Providers of pediatric health care have been motivated and inspired by the research on childhood adversity, which has shown that in the early stages of life, critical neurodevelopmental pathways can be disrupted through exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and resultant toxic stress.1,2 Early detection of ACEs and subsequent intervention has the potential to decrease the development of associated poor...
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Epigenetics? What does that REALLY mean?
As a health care professional with a passion for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) I was having difficulty wrapping my mind around the emerging ACEs related science. Take epigenetics for example, what does epigenetics really mean? And, how did my grandmother's health influence my health today? As a parent, have my lived experiences influence the wellbeing of my children? These questions and more were laying dormant in my mind, sort of like an itch I wanted to scratch, but could not reach.
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Even Infants Need Mental Health Care, so new Chicago Clinic Caters to Those 5 and Under [chicagotribune.com]
By Peter Nickeas, Chicago Tribune, September 20, 2019 In and around Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, long-standing causes of friction like gun violence and poverty have for some families combined with newer fears of immigration crackdowns and deportation of loved ones — and mental health professionals hope to address toxic stress that can have long-term effects on the lives of very young children. Aiming to rectify the shortage of mental health care available to infants and children...
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Expanding concepts of youth adversity: Relationships with a positive Patient Health Questionnaire-2 [Journal of Pediatric Health Care]
" Research suggests that diverse examples of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may link to health. This study examines relationships between conventional (abuse, neglect, household dysfunction) and expanded examples (bullying, safety perceptions) of ACEs and adolescent mental health among youth participating in a statewide school-based survey," To read more of the abstract and for full text access options, please click on the link: ...
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Explore NPPC’s New ACEs Screening Resources Website
Join the National Pediatric Practice Community on ACEs (NPPC) on Wednesday, April 25 at 12:00 PM PST for a Q&A session and a “sneak peek” of its new member website, which provides a wide range of resources to help pediatric practices make the case and implement screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). NPPC is an initiative of the Center for Youth Wellness.
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Families Are Still Being Separated at the Border, Months After “Zero Tolerance” Was Reversed [propublica.org]
The Trump administration has quietly resumed separating immigrant families at the border, in some cases using vague or unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing or minor violations against the parents, including charges of illegally re-entering the country, as justification. Over the last three months, lawyers at Catholic Charities, which provides legal services to immigrant children in government custody in New York, have discovered at least 16 new separation cases. They say they have come...
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Family Voices Receives HRSA Telehealth Award
Press Release | May 1, 2020 | Family Voices Family Voices Receives $1 Million to Support Telehealth for Families of Children with Special Health Care Needs The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), has awarded $1 million to Family Voices to increase telehealth access and infrastructure for families and providers to help prevent and respond to COVID-19. The funds will increase capability, capacity and access to...
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Fathers & ACEs with Trauma Dad & Father's Uplift CEO: Tuesday, September 12th
What supports exist to "uplift" fathers who have survived abandonment, abuse or torture as children? Where can men go to discuss the joys, struggles and issues of being a father with ACEs? Where are the men who face hard, heavy and complicated realities to make life easier and lighter for all who come after? We found two of them and they will be the featured guests in the next Parenting with ACEs chat . Meet Charles Clayton Daniels, Jr. of Father's Uplift and "Trauma Dad" Byron Hamel. Both...
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Few doctors talk to patients about guns; experts say they want that to change [vcstar.com]
By Cheri Carlson, VC Star, June 15, 2019. Doctors and other health care providers often feel that they have a role in preventing firearm injury. But few talk to their patients about the risks. That’s what a group of physicians and researchers say prompted them to try to help. This month, a clinical guide to recognize patients' risk of firearm injury was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine’s “In the Clinic” series. Its authors came from the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research...
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Fighting Compassion Fatigue with CONNECTION
As one of the Trauma Informed Care trainers for my region, I work with community based organizations daily and see first hand the extent of compassion fatigue and how it manifests itself through burn out and secondary trauma. How do we fight this silent, gradual killer? We build connections. Whether it's in our schools or agencies, the barriers to forming relationships are present. Time, communication skills, authenticity,etc- there are several barriers than can block developing organization...
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Finding the Right Words About COVID-19 [chcf.org]
By Kate Meyers, California Health Care Foundation, March 26, 2020 Health care organizations in California and around the US are working incredibly hard to prepare for or respond to a surge of patients suffering from symptoms related to COVID-19. Appropriately, preparation has focused on trying to ensure adequate numbers of health care professionals and sufficient supplies and equipment in the right places at the right times as the demand grows. That focus on numbers and logistics is...
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First health-related cost of ACEs study shows $113 billion price tag for California; just one ACE costs $28 billion
Researchers who have been looking for a way to quantify the health toll of ACEs in dollar terms, now have an example in a newly-released study of California. ACEs exacted a toll costing an estimated $113 billion annually, according to the study in the journal PLOS One that was commissioned by the Center for Youth Wellness. ACEs-associated cardiovascular disease was the condition that lead author Ted Miller dubbed “the giant in the room.” It accounted for $29.6 billion in spending, more than...
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Five things to know about Adoption (Child Trends)
November is national Adoption Month. Child Trends is a great resource. Here is a little information from Child Trends about Adoption. Note many children that are adopted from Foster Care (especially if older) may have normal and...
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For a pediatrician and former teacher ACEs awareness came from a punch in the face
Dr. Kavitha Selvaraj did not learn about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) from a class in medical school. Her first awareness of ACEs came after a student slugged her in the face when she was a new teacher in a school in Los Angeles. She had heard a chorus in the hallway urging her students she refers to as “J” and “N” to “Fight! Fight! Fight,” she writes in an essay in a recent issue of the journal Pediatrics . The two were trading punches. When she stepped in the middle to break it up...
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FREE WEBINAR "Clinician Burnout or Wellness: Care Team Well-being and the Health of the Nation"
Join the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative on Thursday, February 6th for this free webinar highlighting provider burnout and the role of team wellness in trauma-informed transformation!
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GunderKids: Design of a clinical care management program for parents with substance abuse and their newborn children with a focus on preventing child abuse [Health Innovations]
Photo/CreativeCommons "In response to an increased need to care for babies born to mothers with substance abuse issues, we developed GunderKids, a care management program that provides integrated medical care beyond standard-of-care, well-child appointments for these socially complex families. Methods: The program incorporates frequent visits to the pediatrician and the care team, which includes pediatric nurses, a pediatric social worker, and a child psychologist. Enrollment is volun- tary.
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Health Care Reform as a Vehicle for Promoting Children’s Mental and Behavioral Health (IOM - Discussion Paper)
Most mental health conditions emerge in childhood and adolescence (Kessler and Wang, 2008; IOM and NRC, 2009), and many develop in the context of the same risk factors as physical disease (Mistry et al., 2012; Shonkoff et al., 2009). Similarly, many...
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Healthy Spaces December 2019 Webinars
Healthy Spaces: Promoting Healthy and Resilient Communities December 2019 Webinars The New Jersey Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics (NJAAP) believes that all children deserve to feel safe and secure in their home, at school, and while at play. The Healthy Spaces program aims to address adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) through partnerships with pediatric/family healthcare teams, schools and communities. Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect (PCAN) Date & Time: Tuesday, December 10,...
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Hearing in House Education and Labor Early Childhood Subcommittee addresses intersection of trauma and education
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris (l) and Karina Chicote, Churchill Fellow from western Australia meet after congressional hearing After watching the hearing on a monitor in the overflow room, Karina Chicote, a Churchill Fellow from western Australia, and I hustled to the hearing room in hopes of speaking to the lead witness, Nadine Burke Harris, MD, the first Surgeon General of the State of California. She was deep in conversation with others, including a young woman who wanted to tell her how...
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Helping families cope with the trauma of school shootings
More than 214,000 students have experienced gun violence in their schools since the first tragic shooting at Columbine High School in 1998, according to data analysis by the Washington Post . The most recent incident occurred just days ago on May 18th; a student killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Sante Fe, Texas. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network has provided the following downloadable resources: Tips for parents on media coverage Parent Guidelines for helping youth after...
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Helping New Parents Make Room for Uncertainty
A new program for parents and infants, thanks to generous support from Mill Town Capital , is coming to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The Hello It’s Me Project shines a spotlight on these tender new relationships, investing resources around the birth of a baby with the long-term goal of building a healthy community from the bottom up. When world-renowned child development researcher Dr. Ed Tronick spoke in the spring of 2018 for an audience of a wide variety of practitioners in Berkshire County...
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Helping New Parents Make Room for Uncertainty
A new program for parents and infants, thanks to generous support from Mill Town Capital , is coming to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The Hello It’s Me Project shines a spotlight on these tender new relationships, investing resources around the birth of a baby with the long-term goal of building a healthy community from the bottom up. When world-renowned child development researcher Dr. Ed Tronick spoke in the spring of 2018 for an audience of a wide variety of practitioners in Berkshire County...
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Helping Teenagers Feel 'Connected' to School Yields Benefits 20 Years Later [blogs.edweek.org]
By Sarah Sparks, Education Week, June 24, 2019. Adolescents can be challenging for educators to keep engaged—but putting in the effort to make them feel connected to school can pay off well into adulthood. In a study published this morning in the journal Pediatrics, researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked more than 14,000 middle and high school students over 20 years. They found that students who felt connected to their school and family as adolescents...
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Helping Young Children Exposed to Trauma: A Systems Approach to Implementing Trauma-Informed Care [chdi.org]
By Alysse Loomis, Ph.D. Kellie Randall, Ph.D. Jason Lang, Ph.D., CHDI, June 2019. This IMPACT provides a summary of the research on the effects of early trauma exposure, discusses what Connecticut is doing across systems to support young children who have experienced trauma, and outlines a framework to expand Connecticut's robust system of trauma-informed care for older children to include younger children. There are more than 228,000 children under the age of six years old in Connecticut,...
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Heyman Oo integrates ACEs science as foundation of pediatric care
Dr. Heyman Oo, a 34-year-old primary care pediatrician, first learned about the science of adverse childhood experiences in medical school at a grand rounds held around 2012 at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, which she attended from 2009 to 2014. The presenter was none other than Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician who went on to become California’s first Surgeon General. The founder and former director of the Center for Youth Wellness drew millions of views for her TED talk on...
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Hillary Clinton’s Comprehensive Agenda on Mental Health [The Briefing—Fact Sheets]
The first bullet under Early Diagnosis and Intervention of today’s release of Hillary Clinton’s mental health agenda is titled “ Increase public awareness and take action to address maternal depression, infant mental health, and trauma and stress in the lives of young children.” It states “We also know that infant mental health depends on children forming close and secure relationships with the adults in their lives, and that too many children are growing up in environments that cause them...
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Home Gun Safety Queries in Well-Child Visits [jamanetwork.com]
By Carole H. Stipelman, Greg Stoddard, Kyle Bata, et al., JAMA Pediatrics, October 28, 2019 Firearms are a leading cause of death in US children, and the rate of suicide by firearms in people aged 10 to 19 years has increased since 2008.1 In the United States, 4.6 million children (approximately 7%) live in households with at least 1 gun that is stored loaded and unlocked.2 Safe storage of guns and ammunition may decrease the occurrence of self-inflicted or unintentional firearm injury to...
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How collaboration helps clinic in San Mateo County, CA, tackle ACEs in children
Dr. Elizabeth Grady is a pediatrician at the South San Francisco Clinic, a community clinic of San Mateo Medical Center. She and Susana Flores , a senior public health nurse with San Mateo County Health, spoke with me about how the clinic and other health agencies in San Mateo have been able to craft ways to work together to prevent and heal toxic stress in children. Grady also talked about how she and Flores have been working with the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC), a group of...
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How do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
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Hugs, Not Drugs, May Help Ease Kids' Pain in the ED [MedPageToday.com]
[Photo by Juhan Sonin ] Non-pharmacologic strategies and tactics to ease a child's pain may help expedite treatment and improve care in this challenging population, clinicians said here. With both increased pressure to decrease waiting times in the ED and minimize the use of pharmacologic therapies due to the opioid abuse crisis, providers have been forced to get creative, according to presenters at the annual Pain Week conference. This may mean turning to certain behavioral and...
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I’m Sick of Asking Children to Be Resilient [nytimes.com]
FLINT, Mich. — A baby born in Flint, Mich., where I am a pediatrician, is likely to live almost 20 fewer years than a child born elsewhere in the same county. She’s a baby like any other, with wide eyes, a growing brain and a vast, bottomless innocence — too innocent to understand the injustices that without her knowing or choosing have put her at risk. Some of the babies I care for have the bad luck to be born into neighborhoods where life expectancy is just over 64 years. Only a few miles...
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Immigration Rules Change Could Mean More Kids Separated From Parents [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
Anti-poverty and children’s advocates are bracing for the fallout of proposed federal policy changes that would slash access to the social safety net for immigrant families, which could result in more children entering foster care. “Any proposal that undermines the economic stability of families — which is exactly what this does — puts families at increased risk of involvement with the child welfare system,” said Wendy Cervantes, a senior policy analyst at The Center for Law and Social...
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Implementing the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics
SaintA has been committed to implementing the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics TM (NMT TM ) since 2008, working closely with Dr. Bruce Perry and the ChildTrauma Academy staff, as well as its NMT TM partners and colleagues. Our journey...
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Improving Child Well-Being: Strengthening Collaboration Between the Child Welfare and Health Care Systems
Improving the well-being of children involved with child welfare requires close collaboration between the child welfare and health care systems. Annually in the United States, approximately 6 million children are referred to child protective services...
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Researchers share learned lessons from screening for adverse childhood experiences in pediatric clinics
What are the reasons that parents or caregivers do not fully disclose their own or their young children’s ACEs when asked to fill out an ACE screening form in their child’s pediatrician’s office? That was one of the many questions raised in a recent webinar entitled Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Pediatric Primary Care Setting: Practical Considerations and Lessons Learned . Dr. Kavitha Selvaraj, an attending physician at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s hospital...
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In ACEs Connection webinar, physicians talk trauma, offer tips for helping pediatric immigrant patients
Dr. Raul Gutierrez, a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he and his fellow clinicians see constant fear and its health consequences every single day among the largely immigrant and Latino population they serve. It’s all the result of anti-immigrant policies and the news cycle that feeds the fear. Dr. Raul Gutierrez “It is almost inescapable with the repercussions of immigration policy on the radio, television, social media and from friends and family,” Gutierrez told the 69...
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Infancy and early childhood matter so much because of attachment (theconversation.com)
We are born to connect. As human beings we are relational and we need biological, emotional and psychological connection with others . Attachment is the relational dance that parents and babies share together. You can think of this when you see a baby look at their parent and they catch each other’s eyes in a wonderful gaze: the parent smiles and the baby smiles and then the parent kisses and the baby coos. Or, when an infant cries to tell their parent they are hungry, and the parent picks...