Tagged With "Finding the Right Words"
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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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Handouts/Info for Patients
Parenting Programs Incredible Years Triple P Parenting Support Groups Circle of Parents Handouts Family and Caregiver Resources (AAP) Healthy Development (from Zero to Three) One Kind Word (Family Resource of Pittsburgh) Pebble...
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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 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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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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How Does Trauma Affect a Person’s Interaction with Their Child? (www.nicabm.com) & Commentary
Has anyone seen this video posted on the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICAMB) blog? "According to Dr. Ruth Lanius, a parent's experience of trauma can impact their ability to form a close, intimate relationship with their child." Ruth Buczynski, PhD Those of us Parenting with ACEs sure know that's the truth. Developmental trauma impacts our ability to form close and intimate relationships with ourselves, other adults and our children. The video was...
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Interim report of the President’s opioid commission says its final report will address early intervention strategies for children with ACEs
On August 8, President Trump spoke to the opioid crisis in this country and declined to declare a national emergency as recommended by the “President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.” Instead, the President emphasized the law and order aspects of the problem and the importance of preventing drug use in the first place since addiction is so hard to overcome. The Commission will make a final report in the fall. The recently released interim report makes eight...
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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A Conversation with Nadine Burke Harris: How Should Pediatricians Address Childhood Adversity?
Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris is a masterful storyteller. I learned in a conversation with her at Wheelock College before her presentation for the Brookline, MA organization Steps to Success , that before she decided to become doctor, Dr. Burke Harris wanted to be an author. Only after the smashing success of her TED talk: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime , when she was approached by a literary agent, did she find her way to writing. Her newly released book The...
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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 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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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 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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Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study: Beyond Screening in Pediatrics
The evidence is clear. When bad things happen to us as young children, we are at significantly increased risk for not only mental health problems, but also a wide range of physical health problems including asthma, heart disease, and even early death. These "bad things" all involve disruptions in caregiving relationships. A national movement directed at screening for ACEs in pediatric practices has emerged from this work. My suggestion that the implication of the Adverse Childhood...
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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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Alternative IHEBA with ACEs for California (and Other) Pediatricians
If you are a pediatrician serving Medicaid managed care patients in California, then you are required to use the Staying Healthy Assessment or an alternative IHEBA (Individual Health Education Behavioral Assessment) at all well-child visits. The bad news is that getting approval to use an alternative IHEBA is a tedious process. The good news is that as of October 27, 2016 the Whole Child Assessment (WCA) is available for use in English and Spanish. Most importantly, the WCA has been...
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Alternative IHEBA with ACEs for California (and Other) Pediatricians
If you are a pediatrician serving Medicaid managed care patients in California, then you are required to use the Staying Healthy Assessment or an alternative IHEBA (Individual Health Education Behavioral Assessment) at all well-child visits. The bad news is that getting approval to use an alternative IHEBA is a tedious process. The good news is that as of October 27, 2016 the Whole Child Assessment (WCA) is available for use in English and Spanish. Most importantly, the WCA has been...
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An Early Childhood Development Expert Explains How Trauma and Stress Can Derail a Kid’s Life [sarasotamagazine.com]
By Cooper Levey-Baker, Sarasota, December 19, 2019 Mimi Graham has spent her life fighting for kids. She began her career in the late 1970s as a Head Start administrator before moving into the world of academia to study child development and advocate for public policies that improve the health of mothers and children. Today, she’s the director of Florida State University’s Center for Prevention & Early Intervention Policy, a position in which she advises government agencies and...
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Announcing a New Parenting and ACEs Blog from Stress Health, an Initiative of the Center for Youth Wellness
Research shows that the right kind of support and care can mitigate the impact of toxic stress in children and help them bounce back.
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BABY ACES: When we consider the traumas that qualify as ACEs, babies need their own list.
Babies are obviously very different from older children developmentally, including their ability to understand and process trauma. Indeed, a baby may be completely unaware of an actual ACE— say, the incarceration of their father— which a middle schooler would be painfully aware of. Yet at the same time, the baby could be much-more-acutely impacted by the secondary effect of this same ACE: a sad, stressed, and distracted mother. Similarly, if a parent dies in a car accident when a child is in...
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Shifting the focus from trauma to compassion
photo: Rolf Schweitzer/CCO Dr. Arnd Herz, a self-described champion for ACEs science, would like nothing more than to witness a greater appreciation of how widespread adverse childhood experiences are. Herz, a pediatrician and director of Medi-Cal Strategy for the Greater Southern Alameda Area for Kaiser Permanente Northern California, would also like to encourage more people in health care to engage in a trauma-informed care approach, a change in practice that he says not only benefits...
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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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Study shows most pregnant women and their docs like ACEs screening
Photo/ CreativeCommons Would pregnant women participate in surveys from their doctors asking them about whether they had experienced trauma in their childhood? In surveying moms-to-be at two Northern California Kaiser sites, clinicians discovered that the women were receptive to filling out an adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey, according to a study that was published earlier this year in the Journal of Women’s Health. In fact, researchers found out that the vast majority of pregnant...
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Survey: Healthcare providers, community organizations weigh in on California's ACEs screening program
In January, California took a historic leap forward to promote universal ACEs screening of the state’s 13 million adults and children in the Medi-Cal program. The eventual goal is to promote ACEs screening for all patients, but this is a first step in dealing with a major issue that ACEs science has identified: that many children will develop serious health problems later in life because the healthcare system is not currently set up to detect the roots of those problems. The term ACEs, which...
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The Power of a Baby's Laugh
Peek-a-boo: A window on baby's brain By Anna Lacey BBC Health Check http://www.bbc.com/news/health-24553877 Baby laughter: What it reveals about your baby's brain Continue reading the main story Health Check A baby's first smile is an...
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The quest to find biomarkers for toxic stress, resilience in children — A Q-and-A with Jack Shonkoff
The JPB Research Network on Toxic Stress , led by Dr. Jack Shonkoff, is working on developing biological and behavioral markers for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and resilience that they believe will be able to measure to what extent a child is experiencing toxic stress, and what effect that stress may be having on the child’s brain and development. The JPB Research Network on Toxic Stress is comprised of scientists, pediatricians and community leaders, and is a project of the Center...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Do Kids Yoga With Nurse G!
I am continuously inspired by the generosity of spirit that is being shared during this complicated and unprecedented time. There are artists, musicians, storytellers, and teachers creating opportunities for families to bring some structure to our very unstructured day. You can find a variety of classes, concerts, and virtual gatherings through social media. One shining example that I wanted to share is the story of 'Kids Yoga with Nurse G'. I am continuously inspired by the generosity of...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Soap, Toothbrushes & Sleeping on Concrete Floors
Earlier in the year, I wrote a blog post about one of my newest students who was saving food that was served in school to bring home to her family. The 4-year-old girl, a recent immigrant from Guatemala, was storing food in her pants pockets instead of eating at school. Here is a link to the blog post: Pockets Filled With Chicken and Other Social Determinants of Health Yesterday, I was privileged to see this little girl welcome the guests for the end of year celebration as the students move...
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Toxic Childhoods [politico.com]
Often times, a pediatrician or medical professional well-versed in the effects of ACEs or toxic stress can be the initial bridge to services, support, and building resilience for children, youth and families served by child welfare. It's exciting and encouraging to read about more and more pediatricians grounding their medical practice within ACEs framework. A toddler came into my examination room recently at Bayview Child Health Center in Bayview Hunters Point, an underserved, largely...
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Trauma education and mindfulness help youth living amid gun violence
Armon Hurst, 2nd from left, first row, Teens on Target, courtesy of YouthAlive! Eighteen-year-old Armon Hurst serves as vice president of the student body at Castlemont High School in Oakland, Calif. He has a 4.0 grade point average, is an avid baseball player, and is slated to go to college next year. But until a few years ago, Hurst would find himself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night. It was difficult to concentrate at school, and he wasn’t eating well. Armon Hurst “There...
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Trauma-informed groups rev up to address race, inclusion
Eighteen-year-old Kia Hanson has always enjoyed her time as a youth leader at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC). She’s worked mostly with five- and six-year-olds since she began in 2016. Recently, she tapped into new skills, especially if the kids were having a meltdown. Kia Hanson “If they’re off, we ask them, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Do you want to talk about anything?’,” she explains. “Basically asking before assuming they’re mad at the world for no reason.” What made the...
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Trauma presents unique challenges to ELL students [PilotTribune]
photo by Liz/ CC2.0 Editor's note: This excerpt from an article in the Storm Lake Pilot-Tribune in Storm Lake, Iowa highlights how teachers in the Storm Lake School District are being trained in how to recognize trauma in their English Language Learners, which make up the majority of the student population . "With 63 percent of Storm Lake’s students being English language learners (ELL), cultural diversity is a given for teachers. But the trauma inherent with immigrants and refugees in...
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Upstreamist in Action: In a Texas Clinic, Lawyers Are Health Care Providers [Health Begins]
Upstreamists are changemakers pioneering practices that improve health by blending medical and social care . In this series of profiles, HealthBegins highlights some of these bold leaders and their innovations, in settings large and small. Their stories show us that the journey upstream is not only necessary — it’s possible. The People’s partnership began in 2012, when two puzzle pieces clicked together. The clinic’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Louis Appel, a pediatrician with an interest in...
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UT San Antonio Researchers Pilot Ways to Help Youth Deal with Trauma [expressnews.com]
(retrieved from https://www.expressnews.com/news/education/article/UT-San-Antonio-researchers-pilot-ways-to-help-15015016.php#photo-18954339 ) Before 12-year-old Rihanna Briseño started taking classes at Good Samaritan Community Services, she was quick to dislike people and get angry. The Rhodes Middle School sixth-grader didn’t know why, but sometimes her brain told her the right thing was to beat another kid up. “I would say those things that I’m not going to say now,” Rihanna told the...
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Webinar covered how to build trauma-informed connections via telehealth
When Dr. Erika Roshanravan, a family physician with CommuniCare in Woodland, CA, thinks back to her patient visits prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, one way she drew their deep-seated concerns was to ask the reason for the visit and to interject throughout, “Is there anything else?” And it’s asking that question during phone and video visits that has also helped her understand the true reason for her patients’ needs now, she told people who attended an ACEs Aware webinar on April 29 entitled:...
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Wellness and Resiliency Toolkit for Kids with Trauma
I'm excited to share a booklet created for youth in Oregon foster care at a Wellness camp this summer. Youth were provided with these quick, easy and effective (and evidence based) "Mindful Moments" exercises in their Wellness Toolkits and they were practiced throughout the day at camp so that they could be remembered in times of stress and dysregulation. The exercised are designed to quickly bring them back to a state of calm. The youth really enjoyed them, and found them easy and...
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What Exactly is a Toddler Tantrum?
Several years ago NPR had a story about temper tantrums, describing a study showing that the sounds children make during a tantrum indicate that they are primarily sad rather than angry. The written version of the story opens with description of tantrums as " the cause of profound helplessness among parents." I thought this was an interesting choice of words, as I have always thought of tantrums as representing a sense of helplessness in children. In fact, in my over 20 years of practicing...
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What Our Children Need Us to Know, Right Now
Teaching children how to better navigate crisis, right now.
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When Parents Fear "It's All My Fault"
Many of my colleagues in the field of early childhood mental health work with what are termed "high risk" populations. Children of drug addicted parents, victims of child abuse, and families in abject poverty. While the challenges these families face are daunting, I find myself feeling some envy for my colleagues whose clients are in such obvious distress that the need for intensive treatment of parent and infant is not in question. In my rural, small-town population things are not so clear.
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Who's integrating ACEs?
2015 article about Children's Clinic in Portland, OR, doing ACEs history on parents of four-month-old babies. 2014 article about pediatricians taking ACEs history on ACEsTooHigh.com. Center for Youth Wellness, San Francisco,...
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Why I believe Gregory Williams, and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.
When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...
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Why Kids With ACEs Shouldn't Get a Pass on Chores
Don't worry that chores are too stressful for kids with ACEs, says trauma researcher Bob Sege, MD. “You don’t want to coddle them,” Sege said, “because the message they will get is that they are damaged goods. They need to know that the adversity they suffered is only one part of them; it’s not all of them.”
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Why screen if there are no services? (Barbara J. Howard - Pediatric News)
Why screen if there are no services? By: DR. BARBARA J. HOWARD OCTOBER 6, 2014 Behavioral Consult Do you remember the discussion of the ethical dilemma of Huntington’s disease you probably participated in during medical school? The...