Tagged With "Mind Matters"

In response to the police brutality and racism that caused the deaths of George Floyd , Ahmaud Arbery , Breonna Taylor and countless other African Americans and people of color, ACEs Connection supports the worldwide protests demanding racial justice. Integrating practices and policies based on the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACES) — being trauma-informed — requires us to be racially just. Our organization's vision is a world where all people thrive. Our goal is to prevent...

Whether or not to screen for ACEs in primary care is an important debate—and I hear and respect the passion from both sides of the argument. I fall in the “pro-ACE assessments” camp, but with some important caveats. I think that assessments for ACEs are dramatically different from screening for autism or developmental delays. In my opinion, assessments for ACEs in primary care should be primarily about building relationships.

ACEs Aware Seeking Applicants to Support Clinical Work Apply by September 15, 2020 ACEs Aware , led by the Office of the California Surgeon General (CA-OSG) and the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), is hiring for three new positions to further the mission of supporting Medi-Cal providers across California with training, clinical protocols, and payment for screening children and adults for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Aurrera Health Group is the project management...

We are living in complicated and stressful times. What needs to be healed seems more palpable than ever. It feels like the call to release what no longer serves has never been louder and we are feeling that tug at our core. While the founder of The League of Extraordinary People, Alfred White, has been gaining more clarity everyday on this, he was invited to be part of an event, more like a movement, to help others find freedom from what has been holding them back. It is a free, online...

Dr. Shandi Fuller recalls that when she first assembled an all-staff meeting at the Solano County Family Health Services to show how equity and ACEs screening should go hand in hand, some staff members were bewildered. “Why are we talking about equity?” they asked. As Fuller explained to attendees at “A Better Normal,” an ACEs Connection webinar on Oct. 13, the question led her and a colleague to develop training for medical providers on this concept. The webinar was also based on extensive...

Californians have experienced an alarming epidemic of adverse childhood experiences. Between 2011 and 2017, 60 percent of Californians reported experiencing at least one type of childhood adversity; about 16 percent experienced four or more. People who experience four or more ACEs are 1.5 times as likely to have heart disease, 1.9 times as likely to have a stroke, and 3.2 times as likely to have asthma as people who have experienced no ACEs. (For more information about ACEs and ACEs science,...

In late 2018, Roberta Azzo, an operations program manager at Bon Secours St. Francis Medical Center in Midlothian, Virginia, decided to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to infusing the hospital’s culture with a trauma-informed approach to care. This involves recognizing that trauma is widespread and that it can cause all kinds of troubled behavior, learning ways to de-escalate that behavior, and preventing practices that trigger patients and staff who have experienced trauma. The hospital...

WHYY photo credit[/caption] My school district announced that four more schools will be closed at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year. This devastating news prompted me to write this letter that will be combined with other school staff, families, and students to ask our state and national leaders to SAVE OUR SCHOOLS. This is my twentieth year as a school nurse serving the students, families, and staff of the Camden City School District. My first twelve years were spent at Cooper’s...

[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 posts the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Walker CS, Walker BH, Brown DC, Buttross S, Sarver DE. Defining the role of exposure to ACEs in ADHD: Examination in a national sample of US children. Child Abuse Negl.

We have some very exciting news! As of today, ACEs Connection is now PACEs Connection. PACEs stands for Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences.

California can support children and youth by tackling the state’s — and the country’s — legacy of White supremacy and replacing it with a trauma-informed approach of love, empathy, and support.

In partnership with First 5 Humboldt and funded by the First 5 California Home Visiting Coordination Grant, the California Center for Rural Policy has just released the Humboldt County Home Visiting Program Environmental Scan. The findings and recommendations in the environmental scan are grounded in partner workgroups, interviews, and surveys that occurred in 2020-21 and capture the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on home visiting services. Excerpts: "The organizations that provide home...

In a recent nightmare, 8-year-old Jovina dreamt that her father got COVID-19. He was getting sicker, but she and her mother weren’t able to get there in time. “There,” in her father’s case, is a cell at the California Correctional Center (CCC) in Susanville, California, nearly 300 miles from where she lives in San Jose. In Jovina’s mind are a swarm of worries about her father’s welfare, her mother Benee Vejar reports. If an earthquake shakes the Bay Area, Jovina says, “What if the building...

By Rahil D. Briggs, Psychology Today, September 21, 2021 There are many ways to think about baby, toddler, and child well-being. Perhaps you relate to the phrase “early relational health” or maybe you read the recent journal article in Pediatrics that called out the importance of ensuring that young children have safe, stable, and nurturing relationships (SSNRs). There are conversations happening about buffering toxic stress , increasing resilience , and promoting infant and early childhood...

By Jeremy Loudenbeck, The Imprint, September 15, 2021 Citing the need for “repair and healing,” members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to expand therapeutic approaches to juvenile detention Wednesday, calling on department officials to create plans for mentorships with formerly incarcerated adults, restorative justice programs and more time outdoors. The unanimously approved plan presented by Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Sheila Kuehl also directs county officials to...

Growing up, the kinds of toys you play with can make all the difference. When I was a child, I always felt like the way I looked was wrong because there were no dolls, cartoon characters, or actresses that looked like me. Thankfully, things are changing. Bigger companies like Mattel are now producing dolls in different shapes, genders, and skin tones. But gaps in the market still exist, especially for kids with special needs, physical disabilities, and skin disorders. That's where Amy...

PACEs Connection and the Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative, a project of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) have developed two new resources, “Community Strategies to Address California’s Digital Divide and Its Impact on Children and Families” Report and the “Digital Divide Brief: Community Strategies to Address California’s Digital Divide and Its Impact on Children and Families”

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash 'Lighthouse parenting' can help make raising teens less rocky. To read more of Christine Organ's article, please click here. Dr. Ken Ginsburg’s advice for parents is like a hug, TED talk and Masterclass rolled into one. As a parent of teens, I often wonder: W hy didn’t anyone tell me it would be like this? I don’t mean the warnings and complaints about how challenging the teen years are. I don’t mean all of the “just you wait” admonitions. I don’t mean the...

Amy Read of Coastal Horizons introduces the panel following a viewing of "Resilience: The Biology of Stress, The Science of Hope", at the Pender Resiliency Task Force Mini Conference Thursday, June 8 ,at Heide Trask High School in Rocky Point. A "dream team" of subject-matter expert panelists (L-R) were Ryan Estes of Coastal Horizons, Ben David, district attorney for Pender and New Hanover counties, Judge J. H. Corpening, district court judge for New Hanover and Pender counties, Taylor...

Ben David, co-chair of the North Carolina Chief Justice's Task Force on ACEs-Informed Courts, shares plans to sustain the work done during the two-year term of the Task Force, to "care for our own" speaking of North Carolina's children, youth, families, communities, victims of crimes, members of law enforcement, the judiciary and court officers and staffers. He also shared Chief Justice Paul Newby's hopes of "getting ACEs-informed courts" into the culture, and said a national conference for...

(This is a review of what I believe is an important new resource for the PACEs [for positive and adverse childhood experiences] science movement. Opinions expressed are my own, and are shared as a parent, advocate, author, and longtime student of trauma, healing, and prevention. Thoughts are also shared through my lens as someone who believes, deeply, in the incredible importance of and value in building healthier, more compassionate communities to support and nurture pregnant and new...

Use of the term “compliance” instead of “adherence” by healthcare regulatory entities and organizations, plus practitioners, health systems and their and employees condones the blaming of patients for poor outcomes. It’s time to change this practice!

Christina Bethell, Ph.D, MBA, MPH, founder of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI), principal author of the groundbreaking study on positive childhood experiences, and creator of the free Well Visit Planner, among other innovations. Two internationally-respected leaders and innovators in complementary aspects of early relational health and childhood and maternal health equity recently launched a partnership they believe will benefit everyone from newborn babies and...

Emotion has an enormous impact on imprinting memory in our brains. I had an experience when I was 6 years old that included emotion and I have the memory of it all of these many years later. It was a 6 year old birthday sleepover party. There were 7 girls invited that lived near each other and played together most days. A girl new to the neighborhood was invited only due to the requirement of the birthday girl’s mother. I was also invited. I lived a block away but did play with these girls...