News

A3C strives to empower, engage and energize the community that shape and define hip-hop culture. The A3C Festival will continue to provide the best platform for artist discovery, while celebrating hip-hop’s trailblazers, influencers and milestones. In partnership with Atlanta’s Center for Civic Innovation, the committee is pleased to announce seven finalists for the second annual A3C Action initiative, where organizations across the country submit ideas that use art and music as a vehicle to...

Kerri McGinley, PhD a former teacher and principal with the SDP, thoughtfully responds to my letter to the editor regarding the end of kindergarten suspensions with her own letter (below). Dr. McGinley urges all to consider teacher stress too. Thank you Dr. McGinley for raising this important point, reminding us that addressing employee stress and secondary traumatic stress is an imperative if we are to develop the trauma informed education and other systems we strive for. Ease teachers'...

Omar Woodard is staring at his palms as he sits quietly in a café chair. He knows what he’s trying to say, but he seems tangled up on a thought. The stretch of silence is very much out of character for the amiable young nonprofit director from 20th and Cecil B. Moore. He’s a lingo-savvy conversationalist who, in just six months as executive director of GreenLight Fund Philadelphia , has learned how to talk shop with the best of Philly’s impact intelligentsia. These lulls are typically where...

Leslie Lieberman, staff to the Philadelphia ACE Task Force, wrote this letter to the editor about the end of kindergarten suspensions in the Philadelphia School District: Curtailing K suspensions a good first step The School District of Philadelphia will no longer use suspension to discipline some of its youngest and most vulnerable students ("SRC curtails kindergarten suspensions," Friday). The Health Federation of Philadelphia applauds this decision, which is grounded in a growing...

David Bornstein, journalist and author on positive social change, describes the work of the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) medical and social change movement, in this article, which references ACEsConnection and the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) network, of which Philadelphia is part. Read below for thought-provoking commentary: " Putting the Power of Self-Knowledge to Work. " "Thirty years ago, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing gave a series of...

Last year 448 kindergartners were suspended from schools in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP). Last week, t he School Reform Commission announced... that it has approved revisions to the Student Code of Conduct that will remove suspensions as punishment for Kindergarten students. The Philadelphia ACE Task Force applauds this change which is based on a growing awareness in the SDP that many of the challenging behaviors that precipitate suspension of young children have their roots in...

Philadelphia has plenty of primary-care providers overall, but there is far less access to care in communities with the highest concentrations of African American residents, according to a new study. While the general findings were not a surprise - highly segregated black (and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic) areas were known to have fewer medical practitioners - the difference was bigger than the researchers had expected. The effect was independent of neighborhood poverty rates, which turned...

The 2900 block of Webster Avenue in the Hill District doesn’t look like it’s suffering. Most of the properties are in decent shape, and day in and day out, it’s fairly quiet. Rhonda Lockett, a lifelong resident except for a stint in Washington, D.C., said most of her neighbors go to church and many are educated and employed. Yet 75 percent of the block — 36 households — have agreed to open their doors and their lives to community organizers, medical and behavioral health professionals and to...

Strengthen city support for schools. Empower parents and community members. Increase access to and opportunities for neighborhood resources. Those are the three most important things that Philadelphia residents want from Mayor Jim Kenney's community schools initiative, findings based on months of discussions with stakeholders and the Mayor's Office of Education. On Wednesday the office released a report on its findings after 14 roundtable discussions with principals, teachers, students,...

The article that follows, by Jim Saska, written for Spoke Magazine , describes what it has taken to create more green spaces in Philadelphia and how the City stacks up against other cities on this topic. Are there lessons we can learn about visioning, engaging residents, persistence and more that can be applied to our work to create a trauma-informed and resilient Philadelphia? Read the article and share your thoughts J ohn Randolph was paddling a canoe on the lower Schuylkill when...

The National Council for Behavioral Health created two resources in response to trauma post the Orlando massacre. TIP SHEET: Trauma in the LGBTQ Community: What Practitioners Should Know in the Wake of the Orlando Shootings FACT SHEET : LGBTQ Mental Health: How the Orlando Shootings Can Broadly Impact This Community

The " Healing Hurt People program, or HHP, an ER-based violence intervention program. HHP works on the public health-based notion that violence, like other diseases that spread, can be prevented. It targets services to those at highest risk, patients...who are being treated for violent injuries in the city's emergency rooms" Supported financially by Dr. Arthur Evans , commissioner of the city's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, this model brings trauma...