Blog

July 27, 2020 As a companion to Governor Tom Wolf’s multi-agency effort and anti-stigma initiative, Reach Out PA: Your Mental Health Matters, the Office of Advocacy and Reform (OAR) is releasing the “Trauma-Informed PA” plan to guide the commonwealth and service providers statewide on what it means to be trauma-informed and healing-centered in PA. This plan is the result of four months of work from OAR and the Trauma-Informed PA Think Tank, formed in February. The think tank was made up of...

Now that the July 4 th congressional recess has ended, negotiations around the fourth major COVID relief bill are underway between the Congress and the Administration. How the chasm between Congress and the White House will be bridged is a path uncertain, with massive differences between the House and Senate complicating the work. As the pandemic rages across the U.S., there is now at least a consensus that action is needed. But no agreement exists on a payroll tax cut, unemployment...

By BDN Community, July 9, 2020, Bangor Daily News. AUGUSTA — The Maine Hospice Council and Center for End of Life Care (MHC) has received one of 13 grants to work in partnership with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s “We Honor Veterans Program” (NHPCO/WHV) and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The goal is to increase awareness of PTSD, moral injury and suicide and subsequent impact on end of life and palliative care. This will be accomplished in partnership with...

Once in a generation, if we are lucky, someone comes about who in every aspect of their being models for us how to do that, how to be that — how to place love at the center, the center that holds solid as all around it breaks, the solid place that becomes the fort of what is unbreakable in us and the fulcrum of change. Among those rare, miraculous few was John Lewis (February 21, 1940–July 17, 2020), who began his life by preaching to the chickens at his parents’ farm in southern Alabama and...

You are invited to join a free 1 hr. webinar on Tuesday , July 28 from 12:30-1:30 pm Pacific Time (3:30-4:30 pm ET) on the new ITRC Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy Click here to register for the free webinar What is the Need for a New Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy? Climate science indicates that global temperatures will, in the not too distant future, rise above the 2.7-degree F. temperature threshold that unleashes civilization-changing impacts. The U.S. is...

2020 State Trends in Child Well-Being By the Annie E. Casey Foundation on June 22, 2020 The 31st edition of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT® Data Book describes how children across the United States were faring before the coronavirus pandemic began. This year’s publication continues to deliver the Foundation’s annual state rankings and the latest available data on child well-being. It also identifies multi-year trends — comparing statistics from 2010 to 2018. As always,...

By Erin Brantley, Drishti Pillai, and Leighton Ku, JAMA Network Open, June 26, 2020 Key Points Español 中文 (Chinese) Question What are the associations between work requirements and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participation for the overall target population and subpopulations? Findings In this pooled cross-sectional study of 866 000 low-income US adults, work requirements were associated with a 4.0 percentage point decrease in participation for the target population of childless...

We are the only country that systematically collects data by race; race is not a biological construct, so what is race? So to compare the US with other countries you have to get at the question indirectly. Brazil, the United States and Cuba are countries in which the largest segment of the population is white, but each has a relatively large black population. There was a study done by a Harvard professor in the 1990s that looked at life expectancy differences among blacks and whites in each...

South Carolina and Wisconsin’s optional ACE Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) module and the supplemental ACE questionnaires provided a unique opportunity to examine the relationship among ACEs, extreme childhood poverty and mental and physical health in adulthood, as poverty is not included as an ACE in BRFSS ACE module. This study used the 2014 Wisconsin BRFSS and the 2016 South Carolina BRFSS to (1) assess the prevalence of ACEs and poverty and (2) examine the association...

For those of us passionate about social justice and equality, it stands to reason that children growing up in disadvantaged backgrounds may struggle to reach the opportunities and privilege others take for granted. We also know that people from deprived areas tend to have worse health outcomes throughout life than people from better off communities [1] . Poverty has always had clear links to health, but now a biological explanation for part of this may be coming to light. Long-term research...

Leaders in ACEs/trauma/resilience movements from 10 states in the Southeast U.S. met for a networking call on May 21, 2020, to learn about flexible funding opportunities for states under the CARES Act, ways to get involved in advocacy, and how to share their successes and challenges in building statewide coalitions. The meeting of leaders was organized by ACEs Connection and the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) in response to COVID-19 and the growing interest in...

Trauma Matters Delaware (TMD) feels it is important to share our thoughts with our community regarding recent incidents of violence against and deaths of African-Americans. We believe it is important to acknowledge that these incidents are not new, but rather evidence of long standing systemic oppression and structural violence that has traumatized African-Americans and communities of color. Expressions of pain, anger, and anguish shown over the past few weeks are symptomatic of this...