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One Little Rock man is helping African American men fight depression one barbershop at a time. Lorenzo Lewis started the non-profit The Confess Project in hopes of establishing a network of men who support and strengthen one another through discussion. Lewis has been busy on the road traveling to various states with The Confess Project. "We've noticed that different communities have different complex issues but this is a nation's problem," says Lewis. He's visited states like Tennessee,...

The Arkansas Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resilience Workgroup partnered with the University of Arkansas - Little Rock Master of Public Administration's (MPA) spring 2018 capstone class to conduct research and analysis to help guide the workgroup's strategic planning process. Several members of ACEs Connection graciously agreed to be interviewed by the students. We want to say thank you to everyone from ACEs Connection who lent their experience and insight for this project. The class of...

Better than this U.S. border policy inhumane By Eduardo Ochoa, Special to the Democrat-Gazette About four years ago my friend Allen, an internal medicine doctor in New York who runs the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, called me because he needed a pediatrician to go with him and a small group of advocates to visit Artesia, N.M. I asked, "Why Artesia?" He told me there was a military training center that had hurriedly been converted into a holding area for family units fleeing...

"Adverse experiences in infancy and toddlerhood: Relations to adaptive behavior and academic status in middle childhood", will be published in the August issue of the journal Child Abuse and Neglect . The study, conducted by University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences researchers Lorraine McKelvey, Nikki Edge, Glenn R. Mesman, and Leanne Whiteside-Mansell, along with Arizona State University researcher Robert H. Bradley, collected and analyzed interview data from a sample of low-income...

Arkansas ACEs/Resilience Workgroup members Dr. Alan Mease, Dr. Chad Rodgers, Janie Ginocchio, and Marquita Little recently discussed adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their impacts on health and well-being over the life course on "Speak Up Arkansas," a Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families' (AACF) radio show on community radio station KABF. “Speak Up Arkansas” is a talk radio show dedicated to covering issues like health care, education, juvenile justice, the state budget,...

One thing business leaders, philanthropists, parents, child advocates – and even Hollywood – can agree on: The critical importance of quality early childhood education to our nation’s future. At the Bentonville Film Festival on Friday night, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families teamed up with the Helen Walton Children’s Enrichment Center to show the first part of the documentary series “The Raising of America.” It highlights the challenges that communities and our nation face – both...

It is both remarkable and natural that the theme of the 2018 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) May 10th Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day event was “Partnering for Health and Hope Following Trauma”—remarkable to hear “ACEs” and “trauma-informed” roll off the tongues of all the federal officials (some seasoned, some new appointees in the Trump Administration) and natural as the awareness of ACEs science grows at lighting speed…at least it feels that way.

Authors note: This piece is co-authored by @Lara Kain and @Christine Cissy White. Though we had never worked together or met, we were asked to co-present on creating t rauma-informed changes in communities by the Attachment Trauma Network for the first national (now annual) Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Summit in Washington, DC. This article is an expanded essay version of that presentation). Be the Spark Oprah Winfrey helped mainstream discussion about...

On the 27th of April 2018, Rowan-Salisbury School System hosted a showing of the movie Resilience at the Norvell Theater in Salisbury, North Carolina. Upon entering the lobby of the Novell Theater, shortly after 6pm that evening, the amount of enthusiasm and partnership surrounding the showing of Resilience and the trauma work being done within the community was breathtaking. The lobby was filled with teachers and social workers and many key community stakeholders, all working together to...

Thanks to an explosion in scientific research now possible with imaging technologies, such as fMRI and SPECT, experts can actually see how the brain develops. This helps explain why exposure to adverse childhood experiences can so deeply influence and change a child's brain and thus their physical and emotional health and quality of life across their lifetime. The above time-lapse study was conducted over 10 years. The darker colors represent brain maturity (brain development). I have added...

Jennifer Donahue, Delaware Office of the Child Advocate, testifies before the HELP Committee (Jennifer Perry to her right) ____________________________________________________________ Some seasoned advocates say legislators are influenced by stories while their staffs are swayed by data. There was some of both at the April 11 hearing on the draft Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 of the U.S. Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee but it was the personal stories that...

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) plans to award up to 75 grants to rural communities as part of a new Rural Communities Opioid Response (Planning) (RCORP) initiative in FY 18. Successful awardees will receive up to $200,000 for one-year to develop plans to implement opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery interventions designed to reduce opioid overdoses among rural populations. The initiative will focus...