Tagged With "Care of Our Patients"
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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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4CA Policymaker Education Day is Back!
We're back!! Join us for Policymaker Education Day 2019 on MAY 1!
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4th Annual Bay Area Maternal Mental Health Conference
By UCSF Continuing Medical Education, December 12, 2019 This is the fourth annual conference here in the Bay Area focusing on maternal mental health and well-being, with speakers from throughout the area covering important topics that will improve the care our patients are receiving. We welcome anyone with a personal or professional interest in maternal mental health. Participants will: Review the state of the current opioid crisis in this country and learn about tools to help identity...
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A look at the sleek, new San Mateo County jail (almanacnews.com)
The aesthetics of the new San Mateo County jail -- the colors on the walls of community spaces, the sleek furniture, the abundant natural light, and cells that appear more spacious than they are -- are all meant to be uplifting, part of a focus on rehabilitation, Detective Salvador Zuno of the county Sheriff's Office said. "Our ultimate goal," Mr. Zuno said," is to reduce recidivism in San Mateo County." For more on this story, by Dave Boyce, go to: ...
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A Message to California Health Care Providers About COVID-19 and Toxic Stress [acesaware.org]
By Nadine Burke Harris and Karen Mark, ACEs Aware, March 30, 2020 Our global community is facing confusing and uncertain times. As the unprecedented novel coronavirus continues to spread, the health and safety of our nearly 40 million Californians is the number-one priority for our state, the Office of the California Surgeon General, and the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS). This includes the physical, mental, and psychological well-being of all individuals. As the crisis deepens,...
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A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus [tolerance.org]
Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis. By TEACHING TOLERANCE STAFF MARCH 23, 2020 L ast week, as schools across the nation closed their doors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, TT reached out to our community to learn what support you needed at this time. Among the most common responses was a call for trauma-informed practices to support students over the coming weeks and months.
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AAPI Women Lead Community Care Series
COMMUNITY CARE SERIES An online series of workshops, interviews, exercises that are led by our community leaders to help us understand what is going on with the pandemic and what we can do (including health and wellness lessons), specifically as Asian and Pacific Islander communities. [Click here to access series of videos] Recent episodes: 10-min grounding meditation to support you though COVID-19 Dr. Jennifer Mullan from @DecolonizingTherapy Eastern Medicine's Response to COVID-19 with...
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ACEs Champion Julie Kurtz Gives Every Child (and Adult) a Voice
Julie Kurtz hasn’t stopped creating ways to build and promote resilience in herself and others who have experienced trauma since she left her family home for college at age 18. Although she experienced four types of adversity during her childhood, the CEO of the Center for Optimal Brain Integration has traveled a complex journey to mitigate those adversities by recognizing her own internal resilience, building skills to buffer her toxic and traumatic stress, uncovering her voice through...
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ACEs champion pediatricians talk about life and practice in a COVID-19 world
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers everywhere are changing how they care for their patients. I asked a few members of the ACEs in Pediatrics community what they’re doing differently. Dr. R.J Gillespie, pediatrician at The Children’s Clinic in Portland, OR. Dr. R.J. Gillespie Gillespie says that, as much as possible, they’re switching to virtual visits, which allows them “to comfort and reassure our patients face-to-face as much as possible without risking their...
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ACEs Connection's COVID-19 resources for parents, educators & people practicing resilience (all of us)
We are in uncertain times. Homelife has changed. School schedules have changed. Our communities are not the same. Work, if we have it, has changed, too. The world is different and we don't know for how long. We don't know what our lives will look like on the other side, either. We are worried about health, housing, security, and our loved ones. We generally have more stress and less support, as we are taking care of our families, ourselves, and each other. It’s a lot, and for those dealing...
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ACEs Science Champion Series: Dr. Angela Bymaster: This Faith-Based Physician Integrates ACEs Science with Healing Arts
Dr. Angela Bymaster, a family physician at Washington Elementary School in San Jose, CA, operates her clinic in a portable unit on the school property.
Because the unit faces students as they are dropped off by their families, she gets to “pick up the kids” before they are sent to the clinic, practicing “upstream medicine.”
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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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Add the ACEs Connection “shortcut” to your phone and help make the world more ACEs Science aware. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!
Stay current with ACEs Connection -- and easily share stories via social media and email -- by accessing ACEs Connection and/or your community’s home page on your phone. Adding an ACEs Connection shortcut to your phone works for iPhone and Android systems and makes staying logged in, checking in, and sharing out quick and easy, on-the-go! Community managers: Share this post with community members, as using the shortcut is a great way to help your members stay abreast of what’s going on! On...
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Advance Practice at the ACEs 2016 Project Showcase
From the organizers of the 2016 ACEs Conference , San Francisco, CA, October 19th -21st, 2016. Please consider submitting your project today! We know building connections and learning across fields is the best way to advance practices that support children. That’s why we’re very excited to invite you to submit your work to the 2016 Conference on Adverse Childhood Experiences Project Showcase . We’re looking to highlight research, programs, tools or other initiatives that: Highlight the role...
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PAPER TIGERS Educational Version Now Available on DVD or Digital Streaming!
From Tugg.com, March 17, 2016 Tugg Edu is proud to present the highly anticipated ACEs documentary PAPER TIGERS to the educational marketplace. Directed by James Redford ( THE BIG PICTURE: RETHINKING DYSLEXIA, RESILIENCE ), PAPER TIGERS follows a year in the life of an alternative high school that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, becoming a promising model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affect families. With over 450...
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Policymaker Education Day Registration STILL OPEN!
Registration is still OPEN for another week to the second annual Policymaker Education Day hosted by the California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) in Sacramento on May 22nd! Don't miss this opportunity to be able to share your thoughts and expertise with your Assemblymember or Senator on how to address childhood adversity in your communities. Guest speakers include Assemblymember Dr. Arambula of Fresno County, Ted Lempert of Children Now and Sarah Pauter of Phenomenal...
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Positive Childhood Experiences offset ACEs: Q & A with Dr. Robert Sege about HOPE
Tufts University medical professor Dr. Robert Sege directs the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine and is nationally known for his research on effective health systems approaches that address social determinants of health. He is also the principal investigator for the HOPE framework (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences).The HOPE framework is based on research that shows how positive childhood experiences can mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Sege and colleagues...
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Prescribing nature for health draws providers to Oakland, CA, conference
There’s now a growing body of research showing the positive health effects of nature. At a recent conference in Oakland, CA, clinicians who prescribe nature to help buffer ACEs and toxic stress experienced by children and families shared findings from their own research and others.
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Primary Care & Telehealth Strategies for Addressing the Secondary Health Impacts of COVID-19 [acesaware.org]
From ACEs Aware, May 13, 2020 This webinar will focus on building understanding and identifying primary care and telehealth strategies and tools to address the secondary health effects of the COVID-19 emergency. Widespread stress and anxiety regarding COVID-19, compounded by the economic distress due to lost wages, employment and financial assets; mass school closures; and necessary physical distancing measures can result in an increase of stress-related health conditions. These secondary...
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Program offers hundreds of young men, boys safe space to heal from ACEs
Dennis McCollins recounts some of the experiences that caused him to harden against the world as a teenager. “There were times I went to more funerals than birthdays,” says McCollins, who is the clinical director of the School Based Health Center at Greenwood Academy in Richmond, Calif. And it took its toll: “I spent time homeless. I got expelled [from school]. I was so angry and upset and mad,” he says. Dennis McCollins Then a man that he met when he was sent to Job Corps as a teen turned...
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Promoting a Community Approach for Mental Well-Being in Our Littlest Citizens [Chronicle of Social Change]
Several years ago, my sister and I watched my 2-year-old nephew’s behavior change dramatically. He started wetting the bed, throwing temper tantrums and getting frustrated so quickly. In any other child, it might have been normal “terrible twos,” but in him we knew something was definitely wrong. At the time, my sister and her husband were getting divorced. Ultimately, we found out that my nephew thought it was his fault, thus the acting out. This was my first exposure to the impact of...
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Quakes and Tremors: What Foundations Can Do to Safeguard Childhood Wellbeing in the Wake of a Pandemic [fsg.org]
MARCH 31, 2020 | URSULA WRIGHT The world is experiencing a series of quakes and tremors caused by a global pandemic. The quakes are the unprecedented shocks and strains we are witnessing in our health, economic, and education systems. Tremors, on the other hand, are far less obvious because their disruptions occur at a much deeper level and during timeframes when the average individual may feel that they have successfully distanced themselves from the more pronounced quake(s). Both...
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Recommendations Roadmap for Proposition 64 Expenditures: Advancing Healing-Centered and Trauma-Informed Approaches to Foster Individual, Family, and Community Resilience
“There is a critical need to focus on effective strategies that address the underlying causes and structural conditions of substance use, including adverse childhood experiences, adverse community environments and experiences, toxic stress, and trauma.”- Recommendations Roadmap for California Proposition 64 Expenditures Report By Christina Bethell, Stephanie Guinosso, and Kanwarpal Dhaliwal California’s Proposition 64 (2016 marijuana legalization) presents a special opportunity to invest in...
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Report reveals how foster care, juvenile and adult justice systems traumatize youth, calls for policy shifts
YWFC sponsored Sister Warriors meeting When she was 15 years old, Lucero Herrera was put in a rehab program by San Francisco’s Juvenile Court because she was getting drunk regularly. And in doing so, the court failed to explore the root of her drinking. Had they done so, she said, they would have found that anger and trauma were lurking underneath, driven by her ACEs: adverse childhood experiences. Lucero Herrera "Why did they put me in a drug program when I had an anger problem? I went...
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Researchers Call for Quality-Improvement Changes in Medi-Cal Plans [chcf.org]
By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, October 7, 2019 California should move swiftly to improve the quality of care in the managed care plans that serve 80% of Medi-Cal’s nearly 14 million enrollees, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Led by Professor of Medicine Andrew Bindman, MD, with support from CHCF, the researchers examined 41 quality measures and found that more than half of the quality measures stayed the same or declined...
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Safe & Sound: Integrating protective factors and ACEs science to end child abuse in San Francisco in 50 years
It was almost a ritual, but one that regularly disrupted the parenting class at a San Francisco-based child abuse prevention organization. Every time a siren blared in the streets below, a female participant bolted out of the room to seek safety in the windowless interior rooms of the multilevel labyrinthine white Victorian that houses Safe & Sound . Molly Jardiniano And it didn’t just happen in the parenting class. “When she heard the fire trucks, she said she would become paralyzed,...
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San Bruno, CA, police reduce stress, burn-out with mindfulness
When Officer John Hampton of the San Bruno Police Department in San Bruno, CA, first heard that mindfulness training was being offered to him and his fellow cops, he had two reactions. John Hampton “I think my major reaction was: ‘Oh, there’s some hippy thing that they’re trying to get cops to do,’” he said. “When I say that, it’s funny because that’s not my voice. It’s the caricature of a police officer-like voice. In the back of my mind, I was interested and open to it, but that police...
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San Bruno, CA, police reduce stress, burn-out with mindfulness
When Officer John Hampton of the San Bruno Police Department in San Bruno, CA, first heard that mindfulness training was being offered to him and his fellow cops, he had two reactions. John Hampton “I think my major reaction was: ‘Oh, there’s some hippy thing that they’re trying to get cops to do,’” he said. “When I say that, it’s funny because that’s not my voice. It’s the caricature of a police officer-like voice. In the back of my mind, I was interested and open to it, but that police...
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San Jose, Ca physician to talk ACEs science at community gathering
When Dr. Angela Bymaster thinks about ACEs exposure, her thoughts often turn to the adolescents who are her patients now. “It’s the teenagers who keep me up at night,” says Bymaster, a family medicine doctor who works at the Washington Neighborhood Health Clinic in San Jose. The clinic serves low-income families in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Dr. Angela Bymaster “They’re so often starting with the behaviors themselves. The teenagers are the intersection of adverse childhood events...
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San Mateo (CA) launches county initiative to tackle ACEs and build resilience
Attendees at the San Mateo event participate in ice-breaking exercise When you’re working with people who've had a lot of childhood and adult adversity, it’s hard for you to believe that anyone else can have a bad day, says Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. “Your neighbor or your best friend says: ‘I’ve had a bad day.’ And you think, ‘Oh, I’m sorry you had a bad day; were you sex trafficked today? No, you were not!'” Laura van Dernoot Lipsky Van Dernoot Lipsky, the author of Trauma Stewardship: An...
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San Mateo County Child Care Response Team: Resources for Families
The San Mateo County Child Care Response Team has created a quick, easy-to-read, summary of essential community resources for families with children ages 0-18 who are struggling as a result of COVID-19. Available in English , Spanish , and Chinese . The resource pages are linked above, and attached in this post. They also live on San Mateo County Office of Educations's For Families page: https://www.smcoe.org/other/for-families/ Please help us share these documents widely! Thank you. SMC...
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Save the Date: July 11, 4CA Policymaker Education Day in Sacramento
Save the Date: Tuesday, July 11 4CA Policymaker Education Day on Childhood Adversity, Sacramento The California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) invites you to Sacramento for Policymaker Education Day. Our lawmakers need to hear from you about how adverse childhood experiences and childhood trauma affect your community and what they can do to help. Join with allies from across California to engage your elected officials on this important issue. Who: 4CA Policymaker Education Day...
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School by school, Berkeley Healthy Schools Collaborative is forging ahead on building resilience
What began as a presentation by ACEs Connection's Donielle Prince about ACEs science for members of the Berkeley Healthy Schools Collaborative morphed into a lively discussion about how the 11 members who attended the meeting were involved in shepherding trauma-informed practices into their organizations and schools. Prince, who is ACEs Connection’s San Francisco Bay Area community facilitator, talked about the evolution of ACEs Connection into a network of more than 22,000 members in...
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Screening for Childhood Trauma
Dr. Ken Epstein has been in the social services sector for nearly four decades and has witnessed firsthand the long-term effects of trauma. As both the son and father of fellow social workers, the work runs in his blood. Now, he’s helping Bay Area health clinics screen for and address childhood trauma through the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC), led by Center for Care Innovations (CCI) and made possible by Genentech.
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Secondary Traumatic Stress for Educators: Understanding and Mitigating the Effects [KQED]
By Jessica Lander Roughly half of American school children have experienced at least some form of trauma — from neglect, to abuse, to violence. In response, educators often find themselves having to take on the role of counselors, supporting the emotional healing of their students, not just their academic growth. With this evolving role comes an increasing need to understand and address the ways in which student trauma affects our education professionals. In a growing number of professions,...
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Sesame Workshop and BTC Team Up to Help with Big Scary Feelings during the COVID-19 Crisis
Caring for Each Other: How to Use Sesame Street in Communities Resources for Health Emergencies with Families Now Wednesday, April 1, 2020 @ 3 PM ET We're all in this together, and that's why we're all coming together. Sesame Workshop and the Brazelton Touchpoints Center are partnering on a webinar series, beginning April 1st, to share online resources that can help us handle the sudden changes in our lives when we face health emergencies like the one that confronts us today. As a result of...
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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 launches its ACEs and resilience initiative inviting all to take action
Elizabeth Huntley recalls the day when her family’s life was turned upside down. “One day my mom woke up and she packed up all of our clothes, all five of us…and she took me and my younger sister who had the same father… down to my paternal grandmother’s house…and she left us there. She took my middle sister to a town near Birmingham, Ala., and left her there. She took my only brother and an older sister back to Huntsville and left them at a sister’s house. Then she went back to that housing...
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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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Study unearths patterns in San Jose homeless population's ACE scores
Photo by Terabass/ CC-SA-3.0 It was around 2010 that Dr. Angela Bymaster was seeing a disturbing pattern in the histories of her adult patients. She already knew that patients who saw her at the Valley Homeless Health Care Program in San Jose, CA, where she worked at the time, were homeless or recently homeless. What was most troubling to Bymaster was knowing that their current precarious existence could have been prevented. Dr. Angela Bymaster “Over and over and over again I was hearing the...
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Suisun Elementary (CA) makes ACEs science intrinsic to everyday life
Students start each day with meditation During her first year as principal of Suisun Elementary in Suisun City, Calif., in 2014 Ann Marie Neubert suspended 102 students — out of a student population of 550 —for disrupting their classes. It was a serious problem, but the school’s teachers didn’t know what to do. “[Teachers] felt like they were using all the tools in their toolbox and it wasn’t changing behavior,” she recalls. Ann Marie Neubert Too many students were spending too much time out...
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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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Teachers not less likely to be racially biased, study says [educationdive.com]
By Linda Jacobson; April 15, 2020 Dive Brief: Being an educator doesn’t mean an individual is naturally less biased toward students of color, but interventions can reduce prejudices, according to a study released Wednesday. In a test of implicit bias — in which respondents match white faces with “good” words and black faces with “bad” words — 77% of teachers demonstrated implicit bias, compared to 77.1% of non-teachers. And to measure explicit bias, the researchers, led by Jordan Starck, a...
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Teaching Kindness Isn’t Enough [tolerance.org]
Note from Mai: This article really got me thinking, as the parent of a preschooler. In work and adult learning spaces, vague group agreements like "be kind" and "respect others" have always struck me as hollow. But I haven't considered the damage those simple rules can have in classrooms, with young children. I really appreciate Bret Turner's deeper exploration of this and hope everyone working with kids (parents, teachers, afterschool program providers, etc.) will apply some of his ideas.
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Toxic Stress, Behavioral Health, and the Next Major Era in Public Health by Mental Health America
To view the document, click on the following link: http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/issues/toxic-stress-behavioral-health-and-next-major-era-public-health
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TRAINING: Cultural Humility 101: Building Bridges to Diversity and Inclusion
Training opportunity for San Mateo County BHRS non-clinical staff. Wednesday, February 12th 2020 9:30a-12:30p or 1:00-4:00 Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Room 114 1300 S. El Camino Real, San Mateo, CA Course Description: We all strive to engage effectively with our diverse population of customers, patients, and colleagues. Cultural humility offers one approach to engage with the ever-changing dynamics of culture and difference, power and privilege, as we go through our day-to-day work.
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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 Care as a Universal Precaution: Beyond the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire [jamanetwork.com]
By Nicole Racine, Teresa Killam, and Sheri Madigan, JAMA Pediatrics, November 4, 2019 Experiences of childhood adversity are common, with more than 50% of adults reporting having experienced at least 1 adversity as children and more than 6% exposed to 4 or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). There is currently a controversial debate in the medical field as to whether the ACEs questionnaire, which asks about abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before age 18 years, should be...
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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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Update on bills re: childhood adversity in California Legislature
Below is an updated table of bills that address childhood adversity in the Legislature in 2019. The list is not exhaustive, so please email Kelly Hardy with Children Now if you think a bill is missing and/or if you have any questions. Email: khardy @childrennow.org . Here are key dates for the remainder of the legislative session: July 10 = last day for bills to pass out of policy committees July 12 – August 12 = Summer recess August 30 = last day for fiscal bills to pass out of committee...