By Lucas Manfield, Dallas Observer, December 10, 2019 Last year, Dallas' police and fire departments teamed up with Parkland Hospital to rethink how they responded to 911 calls involving mental health crises. They placed a social worker inside the dispatch center to triage calls and sent out a special team staffed with a mental health professional whenever possible. They targeted South Central Dallas, the area with the highest concentration of mental health-related calls. The hope was that...

By Anastasiya Bolton, KENS5, December 9, 2019 By now, we all know what happens after a mass shooting: The breaking news alerts, social media updates, body counts, thoughts and prayers and the public moves on. The victims, survivors, families, people who witnessed the carnage don’t get to. At least not right away. All need some form of immediate help: Counseling, money, someone to talk to who’s already “been there.” A person to provide insight as to what’s to come emotionally, financially and...

By Katelyn Newman, U.S. News & World Report, November 18, 2019 RECOGNIZING TRAUMA AND grief in children and providing evidence-based interventions to help them cope with what they're experiencing in a healthy manner are key to reducing violence and improving their overall health and well-being later on in their lives, said Julie Kaplow, director of the Trauma and Grief Center and chief of psychology at Texas Children's Hospital. "We know that if we don’t address trauma, these kids can go...

Nicole Wetsman The Red River runs north, up along the border between North Dakota and Minnesota, before spilling into Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. Its water flows slowly through a 10,000-year-old glacial lakebed, in one of the flattest stretches of land in the United States, and because it points north, it’s sometimes blocked by ice jams—all of which makes the river prone to flooding . In March 2009, one such flood threatened the city of Fargo. Residents watched for a week as the...

We developed ACEs Connection's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tool — called the Inclusion Tool, for short — to ensure that ACEs initiatives across the world focus on being inclusive when forming a steering committee, recruiting leaders, providing education about ACEs science, recruiting members, or providing resources and services within their communities. The more inclusive your ACEs initiative is, the more diverse it will be, giving your initiative a real shot at achieving equity and...

Jane Stevens will be the special guest this Sunday evening on the "Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams" radio program. The LIVE radio program begins at 8:00 pm CST, Oct. 27, 2019, and the entire hour will be dedicated to Jane and her work with ACEs Connection. The "Breaking the Silence" radio show has over 1.6 million weekly listeners to the LIVE program and then the show goes to over 110 podcast networks around the world the following week. The host of the program is Dr. Gregory...

Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...

An ACEs Connection webinar co-sponsored with 4 CA In 2017, California became the first state in the country to pass a law supporting universal screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the 5.3 million children in the state’s Medicaid program. As clinicians around California await the state’s announcement of what this new policy will entail, many are wondering what it takes to integrate ACEs science in a pediatric practice. Meet Drs. Deirdre Bernard-Pearl, R.J. Gillespie and...

By Michael Painter and Priya Gandhi, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, September 3, 2019 Across the United States, people are recognizing that climate change is a major threat to any vision of a healthy future. They are responding by developing solutions to not only avoid the health harms from climate change, but also actively improve health and limit climate change. In Austin, Texas, city officials have grown increasingly concerned about their residents enduring more days with extreme heat.

The two biggest myths about ACEs science are: MYTH #1 — That it’s just about the 10 ACEs in the ACE Study — the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study . It’s about sooooo much more than that. MYTH #2 — And that it’s just about ACEs…adverse childhood experiences. These two myths are intertwined. The ACE Study issued the first of its 70+ publications in 1998, and for many people it was the lightning bolt, the grand “aha” moment, the unexpected doorway into a blazing new...

Research has proven many significant benefits in cultivating gratitude for mental and physical health. Studies show that the practice of gratitude can increase happiness levels by an average of 25 percent and overall health by, for example, increasing the quantity and quality of sleep. Beneficial outcomes can be achieved by such simple practices as praying, writing in a gratitude journal, placing a thankful phone call, making a mental gratitude list, or writing a thank-you letter to someone.

By Claudia Deschamps, NBC News, September 16, 2019 There are significant long-term effects of not addressing trauma early. Building resilience is key to helping children overcome traumatic events, like a school shooting or a hurricane. Dr. Julie Kaplow, director of the Trauma and Grief Center at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, leads several initiatives focused on understanding how resilience works and how it can be used to heal trauma. [ Please click here to read more .]