Tagged With "Lawmaker Pushing Mental Health Reform"
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SAMHSA’s ACEs/trauma-informed/resilience-building programs
The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has been the leader among federal agencies in developing trauma-informed and resilience-building policies and practices....
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Senate backs program that would prevent childhood trauma [vtdigger.org]
The state Senate has approved a bill aimed at addressing the long-term health and social effects of severe childhood trauma. The legislation, S.261 , which now goes to the House, is designed to bolster the state’s support for children and families who have experienced “toxic stress.” Exposure to severe stress has been shown to alter brain chemistry and affect behavior. A major provision of the bill is the addition of a new “director of prevention and health improvement” to the Agency of...
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Senate confirms new mental health chief [Politico]
08/03/2017 By Brianna Ehley The Senate today confirmed Elinore McCance-Katz to be the first HHS assistant secretary for mental health and substance abuse — a position created under mental health reform legislation enacted last year. A clinical psychiatrist who served as the first chief medical officer for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. McCance-Katz resigned in 2015 amid disagreements with SAMHSA leadership and has been publicly critical of their work, which...
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Senate HELP Committee approves opioid bill with major trauma-related provisions
The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee unanimously approved The Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 Act on April 24. Significant provisions were included from the Heitkamp-Durbin Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families Act (S. 774), including creation of a task force on trauma, and grants for trauma-informed schools.
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Senate HELP Committee schedules hearing on April 11 on draft opioid bill with key provisions addressing trauma and seeks stakeholder comments
Key provisions that are closely aligned with sections the Heitkamp-Durbin “Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families Act (S. 774)” are included in opioid legislation that is advancing in the U.S. Senate. A draft bill, “The Opioid Crisis Response Act,” is the subject of a hearing on Wednesday, April 11 in the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee and a mark-up of the legislation is expected over the next several weeks. Senator Heitkamp’s office highlighted three...
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Separating Children from Parents Can Impair Brain Development (npscoalition.org)
The members of the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives, a group of experts in neuroscience, behavioral science and public policy, feel compelled to issue a statement in response to the practice of separating immigrant children from their parents. And while this practice has now been halted, the damage has been done, with 2,300 having been separated with little effort being placed toward their reunification. A multitude of voices has risen up to condemn this inhumane...
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September 2017 Special Issue of Academic Pediatrics: Child Well-Being and Adverse Childhood Experiences in the US
The United States is on the threshold of advancing much needed improvements in child and population well-being by addressing the epidemic of adverse childhood experiences and finding ways to come together, use what we know, and heal and catalyze a new epidemic of child and family flourishing. A special issue of Academic Pediatrics highlights new national research with inspiring commentaries across a wide range of leaders, each of whom calls out the critical importance of an immediate, strong...
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Significant trauma provisions included in committee reports accompanying spending bill
The House voted overwhelmingly (361-61) to approve the FY (Fiscal Year) 2019 Labor/HHS/Education and Department of Defense Appropriations on September 26, following the Senate’s approval by a vote of 93-7 on September 18. By combining funding for often-controversial domestic programs with funding for defense, appropriators created a must-pass package and made a government shutdown less likely as the looming October 1 deadline approaches. President Trump said he will sign the bill. The...
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Spending Deal Would End Two-Decade Freeze on Gun Research [usnews.com]
By Associated Press, U.S. News & World Report, December 16, 2019 A bipartisan deal on a government spending bill would for the first time in two decades provide money for federal research on gun safety. A law adopted in the 1990's has effectively blocked such research and prohibits federal agencies from engaging in advocacy on gun-related issues. The spending bill, set for a House vote as soon as Tuesday, would provide $25 million for gun violence research, divided evenly between the...
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Stanford’s Chief Wellness Officer Aims To Prevent Physician Burnout (californiahealthline.org)
Stanford Medicine hired Dr. Tait Shanafelt as chief wellness officer last year, not so much for the well-being of the patients — but of the physicians. An oncologist and hematologist by training, Shanafelt, 46, has become a national leader in the movement to end physician “burnout” — the cumulative effect of years of stress that can compromise patient care and cause doctors to leave medicine. After 12 years at the Mayo Clinic, Shanafelt now heads up Stanford’s WellMD Center , dedicated to...
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State and Federal Support of Trauma-Informed Care: Sustaining the Momentum
Policymakers increasingly recognize the impact of trauma and adverse childhood experiences on lifelong physical, emotional, and social health and are beginning to support efforts for incorporating trauma-informed care into the health and social service sectors. This new CHCS blog post looks at how proposed state and federal legislative, regulatory, and contracting policies aim to reduce trauma and toxic stress and promote resiliency and trauma-informed practices. It also explores how federal...
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State of Balance
What activities return us to a state of balance? As a society we push and encourage each other to go above and beyond on a daily basis. I am no exception. According to Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan in their Article “Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure” a state of balance is achieved through recharging. Not the message I received from my father. What I heard from him was all about endure and a little about recharge and that is what he modeled. When he died at 51 from...
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State Policy Guide on Preventing and Healing Childhood Trauma
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children. --Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa Every child needs access to the opportunities that prepare him or her to compete in the changing economies and realities of the 21st century. Unfortunately, for too many children, exposure to violence and traumatic events in the home, school, or community can affect them throughout their entire lives . We are thrilled to release this brand new...
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State Policy Solutions: Helping Children by Addressing Maternal Depression
Around 12 percent of mothers in the U.S. experience depression, and that number is even higher for minorities and those that live in poverty. Beyond affecting their own health, maternal depression can greatly impact mothers' capacity to care for their children. Members of PolicyLab’s Intergenerational Family Services portfolio wrote a brief on how states can address maternal depression through actionable, evidence-based policy solutions. We hope this can be helpful in your work as well. You...
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“Strategic Advocacy: Winning Policy Change without Crossing the Lobbying Line”: Webinar summary & links
(l to r) Kelly Hardy, Allen Mattison, Jeff Hild _____________________________________________________ The stakes in today's public policy debates are as high as they've ever been. So, how does a nonprofit organization separate legitimate and perceived barriers to find the sweet spot for maximum engagement and not cross the lobbying line? The three panelists on the “Strategic Advocacy: Winning Policy Change without Crossing the Lobbying Line ” webinar held March 14, 2019, covered the fine...
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Strategies to combat trauma addressed in second of three congressional briefings
U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) (above) delivered a strong and passionate call to address childhood adversity to reap a “huge payback” in combating addiction, family violence, and poor education -- the “challenges that confront American families.” [For a video of the briefing, click here . It begins at 17:13 minutes with the first presentation by Andrea Blanch. The sound improves at 23:11 minutes when Sen. Heitkamp's remarks begin.] The July 14th event was the second of three...
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Study: Community Trauma from Gun Violence Results in Negative Health and Behavioral Outcomes (Violence Policy Center)
Research on trauma is frequently featured in mainstream news outlets, pointing to its connection to a range of behavioral and health outcomes. While trauma can have multiple interpretations, for the purposes of this report, it is the result of experiencing or witnessing chronic and sustained violence, or specific events that can have lasting effects on individuals. Researchers have identified 13 distinct types of trauma, including community violence. Community violence is an umbrella term...
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Study Finds Racial Gap Between Who Causes Air Pollution And Who Breathes It (npr.org)
Scientists and policymakers have long known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in neighborhoods with more pollution of all kinds, than white Americans. And because pollution exposure can cause a range of health problems, this inequity could be a driver of unequal health outcomes across the U.S. A study published Monday in the journal PNAS adds a new twist to the pollution problem by looking at consumption. While we tend to think of factories or power plants as the source of...
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Telemedicine connects rural Nevadans to specialty care (modbee.com)
Visiting the doctor just got faster, easier and more useful in parts of rural Nevada. That's because of the Nevada Broadband Telemedicine Initiative, announced Sept. 18 at Desert View Regional Medical Center in Nye County. The $19.6 million federally funded initiative aims to increase access to specialty care, including psychiatric services, to residents in rural areas of the state. "That's huge for patient care," said Susan Davila, CEO of Desert View, one of the participating locations.
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The Academy on Violence & Abuse (AVA)
The AVA, which raises awareness and influences changes in the way the issues of violence and abuse are addressed in health profes sional education and its academic communities, has produced a four -hour video about the...
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The ACEs movement in the time of Trump
As with any remarkable change, the 2016 presidential election, a swirl of intense acrimony that foreshadowed current events, actually produced a couple of major opportunities for the ACEs movement. It stripped away the ragged bandage covering a deep, festering wound of classicism, racism, and economic inequality. This wound burst painfully, but it’s now open to the air and sunlight, the first step toward real healing. The second opportunity is how the election and its aftermath are engaging...
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The Gun Violence Epidemic Is Getting Worse And We Need To Talk About It (Planned Parenthood)
Gun violence claims 96 lives every day in the United States. No other developed nation experiences gun violence of this magnitude. More than five years ago, 20 children and six adults were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Since then, at least 1,846 people have been killed in mass shootings. From an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando to a church in Charleston, from a concert in Las Vegas to a high school in Parkland — gun violence is an epidemic. For every day that...
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The Hmong people prefer shamans over doctors. So one hospital decided to provide both. (upworthy.com)
When your culture doesn't believe in medicine, how can a hospital bridge that gap and provide health care when you really need it? That was the Hmong community's dilemma when they resettled in Merced, California. Originally from the rural mountains of southeast Asia, the Hmong mainly worked as farmers before getting caught in the crossfires of the Vietnam War. With the death toll rising, the Hmong were forced to flee to countries such as Thailand, France, and the United States. Mercy Medical...
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The Interplay of Community Trauma, Diet, and Physical Activity: Solutions for Public Health
By Howard Pinderhughes, PhD, University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing August 7, 2017 DISCUSSION PAPER Perspectives | Expert Voices in Health & Health Care Diet- and activity-related illnesses—such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and type 2 diabetes—can shorten life spans and adversely impact quality of life. Over the past 15 years, the public health field has made important progress in addressing these illnesses by shifting the focus from individual behavior to the...
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The Key to Healthy Cities and Hearts Might Come from the Ground (nationswell.com)
Her neighborhood is one of the four neighborhoods in south Louisville that has embarked on a $15 million, five-year study that will once and for all answer if health is tied to an area’s tree canopy. The study launched in 2018 when researchers collected baseline information about the neighborhood’s air pollution and resident’s heart health. Over the next three years, they’ll plant trees and monitor those same residents. In 2022, they’ll observe any changes. As early as 1984, researchers were...
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The Michigan ACEs Initiative: Building Resilience, Healing Communities
The Michigan ACEs initiative hosted the largest convening of ACEs professionals in the state of Michigan. Dr. Robert Anda, Co-Principal Investigator of the original ACEs study, Co-Founder ACE Interface and also featured in RESILIENCE , opened the conference and introduced keynote speaker, Christina Bethell, PhD, MBA, MPH, Professor, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University and Director, Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative in Baltimore, MD, to an audience of...
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The myth, misconception and misdirection of motive in mass shootings
But if we want to prevent shootings, asking about motive will just get you a useless answer to the wrong question. If you use the lens of the science of adverse childhood experiences, the answer reveals itself, and usually pretty quickly.
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The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has a variety of projects which intersect with research on adverse childhood experiences and trauma. Although many projects and training opportunities are designed for sitting judicial...
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's ACEs/trauma-informed/resilience-building projects
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) Adverse Childhood Experiences page collects the latest news and perspectives about ACEs, " The Truth About ACEs " (a graphic describing ACEs), and videos. RWJF supports many projects that...
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This App Maps Opioid Overdoses in Real Time (wired.com)
The opioid epidemic is ripping through America like a fire untamed. Blame big pharma , if you want. Blame cheap pain pills and cheaper heroin. Blame the mesolimbic reward system. Just don't wallow in it - the blame. Wallowing takes time, and with opioid abuse killing close to 100 Americans a day , time is in exceedingly short supply. "The number one question is, how do we get a better sense of what's going on in our communities in real-time," says Jeff Beeson, deputy director of the...
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Top Trends in State Criminal Justice Reform, 2019 [sentencingproject.org]
From The Sentencing Project, January 2020 The United States is a world leader in incarceration and keeps nearly 7 million persons under criminal justice supervision. More than 2.2 million are in prison or jail, while 4.6 million are monitored in the community on probation or parole. More punitive sentencing laws and policies, not increases in crime rates, have produced this high rate of incarceration. Ending mass incarceration will require changing sentencing policies and practices, scaling...
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Trauma and ACEs missing in response to opioid crisis, says national organization
A new policy brief (attached) issued this week by the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) forcefully develops the case for trauma-informed approaches to address the opioid crisis—to prevent and treat addiction—based on strong evidence that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at the root of the crisis. CTIPP is a national organization that advocates for trauma-informed prevention and treatment programs at the federal, state and local levels. Successful strategies to...
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Trauma-informed Care: It Takes More Than a Clipboard and a Questionnaire
California is about to launch an ambitious campaign to train tens of thousands of Medi-Cal providers to screen children and adults up to age 65 for trauma, starting on January 1, 2020. It is well-established that the early identification of trauma and providing the appropriate treatment are critical tools for reducing long-term health care costs for both children and adults. Research has shown that individuals who experienced a high number of traumatic childhood events are likely to die...
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Traumatic Experiences Widespread Among U.S. Youth, New Data Show
[This is a media release from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.] New national data show that at least 38 percent of children in every state have had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience or ACE, such as the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has been suicidal or had a drug or alcohol problem. In 16 states, at least 25 percent of children have had two or more ACEs. Findings come from data in the 2016 National Survey...
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Treating Childhood Trauma Becoming a Public Policy Priority [governing.com]
There’s a lot that’s indisputable about childhood trauma. Emotional or physical abuse early in life impacts health outcomes as children grow up. Community- and family-based approaches to dealing with trauma are better than institutional settings. And children of color are more likely to face traumatizing childhood experiences. Those events can include something as common as divorce, but also encompass circumstances such as having an incarcerated parent, living with someone with a substance...
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Tributes honor the life of Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore
This is a recent photo of an image projected on a building of a younger Rep. Cummings taken on a street in his native Baltimore. From an unknown source, projected images and messages appear on the side of a building near my house in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC. When the news alert came across my cell phone on Thursday morning that Elijah Cummings had died, I felt overwhelming sadness for the loss of a powerful, eloquent, and soulful human who understood trauma in his...
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Trump Administration Announces $1.8 Billion in Funding to States to Continue Combating Opioid Crisis [hhs.gov]
By U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, September 4, 2019 Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced more than $1.8 billion in funding to states to continue the Trump administration’s efforts to combat the opioid crisis by expanding access to treatment and supporting near real-time data on the drug overdose crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced more than $900 million in new funding for a three-year cooperative agreement with...
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Trump Names Former SAMHSA Critic As Mental Health Czar: Dr. Ellie McCance-Katz
(4-21-17) The White House announced late tonight that it had chosen Dr. Ellie McCance-Katz, as the first Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Abuse inside the Department of Health and Human Services ending months of speculation about who would be selected. The announcement came after much speculation that Dr. Michael Welner , a forensic psychiatrist, would be chosen. As early as yesterday, some of my sources in the Senate were saying that Welner had a “lock” on the job. He had...
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Trying to bite the 'elephant' of addiction [somdnews.com]
“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” That was the advice Dr. Jerome Adams, U.S. surgeon general, gave to public health and law enforcement officials Monday during his first visit to Southern Maryland as the nation’s top health official. The elephant in the room of Building B on the campus of College of Southern Maryland in Prince Frederick was the escalating opioid epidemic penetrating communities across the region, the state and the nation. [For more on this story by DANDAN...
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Two studies shed light on state legislators’ views on ACEs science and trauma policy
New and returning lawmakers take the oath of office on day one of Washington state's 2017 legislative session. — Jeanie Lindsay/Northwest News Network As advocates prepare to see how ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) science, trauma, and resilience play out in the 2020 state legislative sessions — many beginning in January — they are undoubtedly asking: “What does a legislator want?" It may be a stretch to play on Freud’s question: “What does a women want?", but the query captures how...
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(U.S. Representative, D-Colorado) Polis counters Trump’s call for a new office to investigate immigrants who commit crime (polis.house.gov)
Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., announced that he is planning to start the Saved by American Immigrants National Taskforce or “ SAINT ” to collect stories of immigrants - both documented and undocumented - who have positively contributed to U.S. society through heroic or lifesaving acts. There are many Americans who are alive today only because of the heroic acts of immigrants who saved their lives. Watch the complete announcement here . Polis started the taskforce in response to President...
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U.S. Sen. Heitkamp headlines May 25 briefing—trauma is “key”
When U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp arrived mid-way through the May 25, 2016, congressional briefing on the Science of Trauma, she delivered her remarks (starts at 27:48 through 41:45) with passion, humor, and most of all, a sense of urgency to the room full of Capitol Hill staff and a smattering of advocates. Her message was macro as well as micro—change national policy to incorporate what the science tells us about trauma, and see and respond to the needs of those you encounter in everyday...
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U.S. Senate begins debate on bipartisan addiction and recovery legislation
Starting today, the U.S. Senate takes up the bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA, S. 524) to address the national crisis of opioid drug addiction. The legislation—authored by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rob Portman (R-OH)—gives states tools to “prevent drug abuse, treat addiction, and reduce overdose deaths.” The prevention section of the bill calls for a “federal inter-agency task force to review, modify, and update best practices for pain management and...
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U.S. Senate champion on trauma, Heidi Heitkamp, provides inspired and hope-filled leadership
Last evening I posted a video of a June 5 congressional briefing that I attended on trauma and the opioid crisis with a plan to write a post about the event today. In the comfort of my living room, I played the beginning of the video, hoping to find a good screen shot to use with the article, but instead was surprisingly moved by the second listening of the words of U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) about why the issue of trauma is so important her: She says it gives her hope.
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U.S. Senate passes opioid legislation with trauma-related provisions
On Monday evening, the U.S. Senate approved 99-1 the Opioid Crisis Response Act (OCRA) of 2018 (Senator Mike Lee, R-UT was the lone “no” vote). The rare, multi-committee, bipartisan bill includes significant provisions taken from or aligned with the goals of the Heitkamp-Durbin Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families Act (S. 774) , including the creation of an interagency task force to identify trauma-informed best practices and grants for trauma-informed practices in schools. The...
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United Nations Report Recommends that the US Decriminalize Being Poor (nonprofitquarterly.org)
Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, will present his findings from his 12-day fact-finding tour on poverty in the US to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on June 21 st . During his tour, Alston made stops in California, West Virginia, Alabama, and Puerto Rico. An early version of his findings was released in December and was covered in NPQ by both Jim Schaffer and Marty Levine , but his final report was only published a month...
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Unprecedented childhood trauma hearing in U.S. Congress on July 11 to feature data from new state fact sheets on ACEs prevalence, impacts
A hearing of unprecedented scope and depth (this link will take you to a list of witnesses and all of their statements plus an overview memo on the hearing from committee staff) on ACEs science and childhood trauma — " Identifying, Preventing, and Treating Childhood Trauma: A Pervasive Public Health Issue that Needs Greater Federal Attention " — will be held today in the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. You can watch the live stream at 10:00 am ET through this link . Nine witnesses...
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Update on Bumper Crop of State ACEs bills in 2017—46 bills in 20 states
The latest update of state legislation considered by state legislatures in 2017 reveals the growing interest by state policymakers across the country in addressing trauma across sectors. The attached “At-A-Glance” table shows 46 bills in twenty states reference Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) or trauma-informed policy and practice. Take a look at the attached “At-A-Glance” table and leave a comment if your state considered ACEs/trauma legislation that is not included here. A handful of...
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Utah passes resolution to encourage state policies and programs based on ACEs science
In the solidly red state of Utah, lawmakers approved and sent to Gov. Gary Herbert a resolution ( H.C.R. 10 ) on March 7 to encourage state policy and programs to incorporate ACEs science to address “severe emotional trauma and other adverse childhood experiences” in children and adults and implement evidence-based interventions to increase resiliency. Every recorded vote cast by Democrats and Republicans favored the resolution. A detailed context for the recommendations was included in the...
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Victims of Incarceration: The life-altering impact of WWII Japanese-American camps (dailynews.com)
Japanese-Americans who lived through the incarceration or whose parents were in the camps say the negative rhetoric about Muslims and immigrants today reminds them of the racism they encountered decades ago and how damaging the experience was to the health and well-being of their community. Japanese-Americans worry immigrants and Muslims could suffer from the same lasting effects their incarceration had on them and their descendants. “A lot of the reactions were defense mechanisms —...