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...

From Weill Institute for Neurosciences, UCSF, May 2020 These are unprecedented times. We need to work extra hard to manage our emotions well. Expect to have a lot of mixed feelings. Naturally we feel anxiety, and maybe waves of panic, particularly when seeing new headlines. A recent article by stress scientist and Vice Chair of Adult Psychology Elissa Epel, PhD, outlines the psychology behind the COVID-19 panic response and how we can try to make the best of this situation. Our anxiety is...

By Renee Ryberg, Nadia Orfali Hall, Claire Kelley, Jessica Warren, and Kristen Harper, Child Trends, January 2020 In 2015, an average 15-year-old could expect to live to age 79. However, teens living in the 1 percent of neighborhoods with the lowest life expectancies could expect to live to 70—a lifespan nine years shorter. Educational attainment, a key social determinant of health, is one of the most powerful predictors of life expectancy. This association has strengthened over the past 20...

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...

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...

The second of two free Community Resiliency (CRM) webinars with Elaine Miller-Karas , key creator of the CRM, will be held Thursday, May 14, from 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. ET, (10 a.m. CT; 9 a.m. MT, and 8 a.m. PT) and will include the practical application of tools of the model. CRM is an ACEs science-based biological model for helping individuals become emotionally regulated during natural disasters and other dysregulating times. Miller-Karas will be joined by CRM trainers from Wilmington, NC:...

ACEs initiative participants in communities where there is tension between the community and law enforcement will want to join Becky Haas in a compelling conversation on law enforcement, ACEs science, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement and protests. Haas is a nationally recognized adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) science initiative builder and trainer. She and colleagues Renee Wilson-Simmons, the head of the ACE Awareness Foundation of Memphis, Tennessee, and Maggi Duncan,...

Apply for a Scholarship In this new video PJI Director, Rachel Allen shares some exciting information regarding what you can expect at the upcoming Conference! Register for the Conference Conference Overview: The Peace and Justice Institute at Valencia College, the Early Learning Coalition of Orange County, the Creating a Resilient Community Network and Title Sponsor, Orlando Health, are excited to invite you to register for the Third Annual Creating a Resilient Community (CRC): From Trauma...

Please sign onto and share this memo supporting using a trauma-informed approach to decreasing vaccine hesitancy! Many of the challenges we are facing with vaccine hesitancy can be better understood by looking at the issue through a trauma-informed lens. The following memo has been developed with input from many of the clinical and academic thought leaders from the trauma healing field to offer supportive guidance to the Administration. To successfully address this challenge, we need to...