Tagged With "Primary Care"
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Mental Health Awareness: When Suffering Is Not an Illness
When I was an adolescent and young adult, I struggled with depression. As I reflect back on that time, so much of what I was experiencing was deeply tied to coming to terms with my sexuality. Growing up in the 1980’s in a relatively conservative town, I was closeted (even to myself) until I was a young adult. The pain and fear of being different, of not belonging, of being judged or rejected for who I was more than my adolescent brain could wrap its conscious head around.
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Looking for behavioral health and medical providers to join clinic in Federal Way
From the League of Extraordinary People in Federal Way: We are seeking Doctors, Nurse Practitioners, and Social Justice Healthcare Organizers from the community to help us develop a Black & Multiracial Behavioral Healthcare Clinic and Residential Community on the 1.5 acres of property we own in Federal Way, WA. Amidst the circumstances created by the current pandemic, we are establishing virtual services such as Case Management, Life Coaching, and more. The experience and knowledge...
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Physician Burnout, Interrupted (NEJM)
By Pamela Hartzband, M.D., a nd Jerome Groopman, M.D. June, 25, 2020, N Engl J Med 2020; 382:2485-2487 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2003149. Before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, each day seemed to bring another headline about the crisis of physician burnout. The issue had been simmering for years and was brought to a boil by mounting changes in the health care system, most prominently the widespread implementation of the electronic health record (EHR) and performance metrics. 1 Initially, the...
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ACEs screening is about building relationships, says early adopter
Whether or not to screen for ACEs in primary care is an important debate—and I hear and respect the passion from both sides of the argument. I fall in the “pro-ACE assessments” camp, but with some important caveats. I think that assessments for ACEs are dramatically different from screening for autism or developmental delays. In my opinion, assessments for ACEs in primary care should be primarily about building relationships.
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Reimagining Healthcare as a Community Investment
At this point, COVID-19 has been a part of our lives for nearly six months now. While the most recent current events are not unfamiliar social problems, this pandemic has provided us with a stronger lens with which to see many of the underlying inequities within our communities. This article, “The Moral Determinants of Health,” explores these inequities by illustrating the systemic imbalances within the field of medicine and the amount of resources we allocate to solving problems as opposed...
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Inside Girls Court, Washington State’s first therapeutic court model for girls (KUOW)
By Lila Shroff, July 2, 2020, KUOW. Over the past two decades, while juvenile incarceration rates have been decreasing, rates of incarcerated girls have either stayed the same, or increased . In response, the Kitsap County Girls Court opened in June 2019 as Washington state’s first court system providing service just for girls. A few months ago, I went to see Girls Court in action. [ Please click here to read more. ]
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California reaches milestone with ACEs initiatives pulsing in all 58 counties. Next: All CA cities.
Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...
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New Resource: Trauma-Informed Nutrition Factsheet
A newly developed factsheet, “Trauma-Informed Nutrition: Recognizing the Relationship between Adversity, Chronic Disease, and Nutritional Health” has just been released. This factsheet is intended for Registered Dietitians (RDs) and was designed to support and describe the connection between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the impacts of trauma and its relationship to chronic disease, and trauma-informed nutrition practices. This factsheet was developed through a collaborative...
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DCYF Strategic Plan Feedback Survey - needs your input!
Before the creation of DCYF, funding and services were not always connected. The draft strategic plan helps our agency focus on how we serve children, youth, families and our communities as one entity. This framework helps to build on existing funding and services to strengthen our ability to serve families as well as to disrupt racial inequity and disproportionality in our systems. There is more work ahead for us to accomplish the priorities set out in the draft plan. The process to gather...
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Congress urged to address trauma in the 4th COVID bill
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...
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Greater Richmond Trauma Informed Community Network, first to join ACEs Cooperative of Communities, shows what it means to ROCK!
In 2012, Greater Richmond SCAN and five other community partners hatched a one-year plan to educate the Richmond, Virginia, community about ACEs science and to embed trauma-informed practices. Eight years later, the original group has evolved into the Greater Richmond Trauma-Informed Community Network (GRTICN) with 495 people and 170 organizations. And they're just scratching the surface.
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Ann Penn-Charles casts a wide net to reduce generational trauma in Washington State coastal tribes
You could say that Ann Penn-Charles, a native of La Push, Washington, was a natural resilience builder even before there was an ACE Study. La Push is a Native American reservation on the western edge of Olympic National Park, where the Quileute Nation ancestors of “Miss Ann”, as she is known, have lived for generations. Although she faced hardships growing up on the reservation, including having her first child when she was a junior in high school, she was able to graduate with the support...
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Does VP Candidate Kamala Harris know about ACEs? You bet!
Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General, has a lot in common with the vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris—Jamaican heritage, surname, home state—and a commitment to addressing ACEs and toxic stress. As reported in the New Yorker article by Paul Tough, “The Poverty Clinic,” Dr. Harris told Kamala Harris, then San Francisco district attorney, about ACEs in 2008 and in response, she offered to help. District Attorney Harris then introduced her to professor of child and...
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ACE Impact Team Aligns Efforts to Help Newark Residents Reach Greatest Potential
Five years of convening Newark’s ACE Impact Team has taught Keri Logosso-Misurell a crucial lesson: Fight the urge to reinvent the wheel.
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Pathway for Trauma is Pathway for Resilience: Fresno Network's Message Inspires Hope
In Fresno, volunteers from local churches were already working with the schools, mentoring kids and running weekend recreation programs. Community-based non-profits were in conversation with educators; pastors were talking to social-service providers. The problems were clear: nearly 30% of Fresno’s residents living in poverty (the rate tops 40% for Black residents), with a 20-year gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest parts of this sharply segregated city. For several years,...
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Webinar - Protecting Our Children: COVID-19's Impact on Early Childhood and ACEs
Septembre 10, 2020 10:00 - 11:00 AM PT National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) "This webinar will bring together experts to provide insight on early childhood development, ACEs and COVID-19's impact on children" To register: https://www.nihcm.org/events/upcoming-events
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LAUNCH Together Supports Social Emotional Well-Being in Southwest Denver
As the COVID-19 pandemic blurred from days into months, the leadership team of LAUNCH Together Southwest Denver began hearing about the sense of anguish and confusion felt by directors of early-childhood learning centers: Should I re-open? Is that financially feasible? Is it ethical? And how do I decide, in a sea of fast-changing information about a virus scientists are still struggling to understand? LAUNCH Together SW Denver, a collaborative formed in 2016 to boost community capacity to...
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Upcoming Webinar: Tools & Resources for Coping with Stress, Fear and Anxiety (New Jersey Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics)
As part of NJAAP's Healthy Spaces program, we invite you to join us on Thursday, September 24th from 12:00-1:00 PM for our virtual educational workshop, Tools & Resources for Coping with Stress, Fear and Anxiety! Register Here ! This virtual session will share tools and resources to support mental and behavioral health during the pandemic. Dr. Leopardi and Dr. Gubernick will share guidance on self-care, stress management, and positive discipline. Participants will also engage in...
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Landscape of ACEs-related data from national surveys in the United States
Compiling data sources of ACEs statistics is critical to identify gaps in ACEs research in the US and Georgia. There is a lack of consistent data on ACE statistics. Resilient Georgia is an Atlanta-based organization that works towards creating an integrated behavioral health system by streamlining public and private efforts and resources to enhance trauma informed care through research, policy, and practice in Georgia. University of Georgia (UGA), College of Public Health Ph.D. student Kiran...
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"Who's in Your Canoe?": Ho‘oikaika Partnership Draws on Hawaiian Values to Promote Protective Factors
Title image: Jeny Bissell, Ho‘oikaika Partnership founder and Core Partner, gives a shaka at a Child Abuse Prevention Month mayor's proclamation and concert. A brochure from the Ho‘oikaika Partnership shows four people paddling a slender boat, their bodies silhouetted against an apricot-hued sky. The tagline: “When it comes to parenting, who’s in your canoe?” The image and the metaphor are intentional, says Karen Worthington, coordinator of the 60-member, cross-sector Ho‘oikaika Partnership...
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Communities of Opportunity Invites Proposals for Black-led Systems and Policy Change (Best Start)
RFP Announcement - King Co Washington state. Proposals are requested for the 2021 grant year. Communities of Opportunity (COO) commits $725,000 to systems and policy change projects led by and for Black communities in King County. Eligible partnerships of Black-led (including African descent and diaspora) organizations working on systems and policy change in the Black community may apply for funding through this Request for Proposal. In June 2020 King County Executive Dow Constantine and...
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Free 2020 Virtual Trauma-Informed Care Conference
Each year, STAR hosts a Trauma-Informed Care Conference to help educate the next generation of leaders and build a strong network of Trauma-Informed professionals in the state of Georgia. The conference will be held on Saturday, October 3rd from 10:00am- 1:00pm EST and Sunday, October 4th , 2020 from 2:00pm-5:00pm EST conducted virtually via Zoom.
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Youth-Led Advocacy Creates Healing Opportunities in Baltimore City
After a shooting at a historic Baltimore high school in February 2019—a 25-year-old man, angry about the school’s treatment of his sister, who was a student there, shot a special education assistant with a Smith and Wesson handgun—conversation in the city centered on whether school resource officers should be armed. Students said that was the wrong question. When City Council’s education and youth committee, chaired by council member Zeke Cohen, held hearings on school violence following the...
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COVID-19: Trauma-Informed Perinatal Care and Maternal Health [psychologytoday.com]
By Ann Diamond Weinstein, Psychology Today, September 28, 2020 The experience of life during the pandemic and the impact of COVID-19 guidelines for perinatal care have changed the maternal-fetal experience of pregnancy and birth, as well as the maternal-infant experience during the postnatal period. The neuroception (1) of danger and the potential threat to one’s own life and that of loved ones has been sustained since the magnitude and lethalness of the pandemic was fully appreciated.
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'A Better Normal:' Can universal ACEs screening be equitable? -- Concerns and solutions
Can universal ACEs screening be equitable? A conversation about concerns and solutions. When: Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2-3:30 pm PDT/5-6:30 pm EDT This webinar explores what it takes to ensure that equity is built into the process of screening and providing support for families who have experienced trauma and want help. REGISTER HERE Background At the beginning of this year, California, through the ACEs Aware initiative began rolling out universal screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs),...
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Ripple Effect: Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe Partners with Schools and Service Providers to Build Trauma-Informed Community in Michigan
The week of the fall equinox was Mino-Bimaadiziwin Wellness Week at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy (SCA) in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, a pre-K through 5th grade school of about 130 students. “Mino-Bimaadiziwin” is an Anishinabe phrase meaning “to live the good life.” At the school, it started with “Mindfulness Monday”—students were encouraged to wear their favorite “thinking cap”—then segued to “Take care of our bodies Tuesday,” a “Love Your Community Wednesday" that included talking circles, and...
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Spreading the Science: Michigan's NEAR Collaborative Aims to Infuse ACEs Science into State Departments and Agencies
Mary Mueller likes to call herself an “opportunistic infection.” What that means is that Mueller, project coordinator for trauma-informed systems in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), is determined to share the science of ACEs and resilience wherever she goes. After Mueller attended the state’s first ACE master trainer two day session hosted by the Michigan ACE Initiative , she wanted to bring the foundational science shared by ACE Interface back home—to her MDHHS...
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Emotional Sobriety Continuum of Care Book Club
Join us for a deep dive into Tian Dayton's book Emotional Sobriety. We will utilize both the book and workbook - available online for ordering - for this long-term Continuum of Care series. Starting in November 2020 , we will read one chapter a month. TLOEP Founder, Licensed Mental Health Therapist, and Subject Matter Expert, Alfred White, will lead us in discussion asynchronously on our Facebook TLOEP Book Club group and in once-a-month live conversations. You can expect to experience a...
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"NEAR Science in Partnership with Communities": Local ACEs Collaboratives Grow Across Minnesota
The third annual gathering of Minnesota ACEs collaboratives—“Growing Resilient Communities: Collaboratives Addressing ACEs”—began with a sober recitation of inequities: We acknowledge that the wealth of this country was built on stolen land and with enslaved and underpaid labor of African American, Native, and Immigrant people…We acknowledge that the recent global uprising, which was sparked by the murder of George Floyd right here in Minnesota, paired with the COVID-19 pandemic, makes for a...
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“Unite in a Common Cause”: Minnesota Tribal Communities Use NEAR Science to Address Trauma and Promote Healing
As the Minnesota trainers expected—and welcomed—the ACE trainings in tribal settings began late and lasted for hours: multiple generations of people from the White Earth and Fond du Lac communities gathering around simmering Crock-Pots of food, sharing stories, standing in line to talk with the trainers afterward. Once, a White Earth elder was the only person to show up for a presentation, recalls Linsey McMurrin, Director of Prevention Initiatives and Tribal Projects for FamilyWise Services...
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A Better Normal Community Discussion - Reimagining Health Care
In a conversational style, join physician Drew Factor who will speak with Dr. Tracy Gaudet, Liza Guroff and An é Watts in a discussion entitled "Reimagining Health Care". Dr. Gaudet will speak about her experience engaging in transformational change at the Veterans Administration and how this has shaped the development of her own Functional Medicine Institute , while Ms. Guroff and Ms. Watts will speak about their knowledge of a Trauma-Informed Approach both at a systems (National Council...
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Clallam Resilience Project's "Take Care & Be Well" Tiny Video Series
Clallam Resilience Project is facilitating a community project to create a tiny video series called "Take Care & Be Well." The series intends to share resilience skills that community members are already using, and help identify new ones. Videos can be found on the Clallam Resilience Project website or youtube channel . What resilience skills do you practice in everyday life?
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"A Better Normal" Community Discussion: Suicide Awareness and Community Cafes
Join us on Friday November 6, 2020 from noon to 1:00 PST as we come together and join Satya Chandragiri MD, Bonnie O’Hern RN, Denise PNP, & Michael Polacek RN for a discussion around the tender issue of suicide. Together we will discuss ways people and providers can support each other and encourage communities to take action to support one another around suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and the layers of culture and structural barriers to care. A special emphasis will be on...
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The Intersection of Systematic Racism, the Pandemic, and SDoMH: Reality Mandates Change
Systematic racism is at the core of mental health disparities and social determinants of mental health (SDoMH).Upstream factors obstruct patient access to needed and appropriate assessment, timely intervention, with treatment for these populations often reflecting poorer quality, and ending prior to completion of treatment. COVID-19 and the recent pandemic have only amplified meso and micro-level gaps in care. considered, provided, and reimbursed.
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100% Community Initiative Builds Vital Services So New Mexico Kids Can Thrive
The deaths of several New Mexico children in recent years—a 13-year-old whose father was accused of fatally torturing him; an eight-year-old who was kicked to death by her mother; a girl raped, strangled and stabbed by her mother’s boyfriend the night before her 10th birthday—drew horror, outrage and scrutiny of the state’s child welfare system. Those incidents drove child welfare and public health specialists Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello to examine the data. Cappello and...
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Listening, Learning and Showing Up: Central Oregon's TRACEs Focuses on Root Causes of Trauma
TRACEs’ work group on youth and children in foster care spent a good portion of the last year’s monthly meetings examining holes in the system: How would foster families be affected by changes in funding from the Oregon Department of Human Services? What would it mean for kids if Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) positions were cut? Most important, what did foster children and youth, their families of origin and their foster families need in order to thrive? “We put together a...
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Tools to Mitigate Work Stress and Prevent Burnout: For Health Care Providers during COVID and Beyond
Whether you work in a hospital, a safety net clinic, or in another health care setting, no health care provider working during the COVID-19 pandemic needs to read the flurry of news stories that highlight the extreme stress experienced by people in this line of work – you already know it firsthand. This webinar will introduce health care providers to the Community Resiliency Model ( CRM ), an evidence-based method of managing traumatic stress, preventing burnout and building resiliency. This...
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Nashville’s Purposeful Twist on ACEs: All Children Excel
In 2015, the pieces that became ACE Nashville began to fall into place. A five-year Community Health Improvement Plan included the support of mental and emotional health as one of its three goals. A core team of individuals from the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee and the Family Center, a non-profit focused on breaking generational cycles of child trauma, began to meet weekly. And a citywide “consensus workshop” in April of that year—drawing 44...
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Empower Action Model Provides Framework for Strategic Coalitions in South Carolina's Marlboro County and Beyond
Lauren Szymonik kept posing the same questions to members of the Empower Action coalition in Marlboro County: “What is the data telling you? What is the data saying about education? What is the data telling you about trauma?” The numbers were clear: according to 2014-16 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys, 56% of the county’s 24,000 adults had experienced at least one ACE. In 2017-18, there were 212 cases of child maltreatment, including abuse and neglect, among the...
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Sonoma County field nurses use ACEs science to educate families
Santa Rosa, CA, resident Lisa Marden watches her 15-month-old baby gleefully play with magic markers and relays how she’s been coping with feeling anxious. (We're using a pseudonym to protect the family's privacy.) “I’m just super stressed out with everything, and as soon as I eat anything, I get nauseous, so I’ve been eating snacks instead of meals,” she explains to Liz George, a field nurse with the Maternal/Child Field Nursing team of Sonoma County, CA, who has been seeing Marden on home...
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Join the Compassion in Therapy Summit: A Free Online Training with Awake Network January 30th—February 3
The free 2021 Compassion in Therapy Summit co-produced by The Awake Network and The Center for Mindful Self-Compassion begins Saturday, January 30th! If you or someone you care about is a therapist, social worker, clinician, psychologist, counselor, or anyone else working in mental health or you want to learn more about applying self-compassion to your own well-being, please check it out below and help spread the word! Join this FREE online event and learn mindfulness, self-compassion, and...
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Washington Youth Flex Lobbying Might on Rights of Native Americans, Homelessness and Foster Youth [imprintnews.org]
By Elizabeth Amon, The Imprint, February 1, 2021 When teens and young adults who’ve lived through homelessness and foster care gather this year to tell Washington state policymakers what their peers need most, the youth advocates will have three priorities: they want lawyers for every foster child, a task force to focus on the experience of Native Americans and better support for the newly independent. The youth advocates, ages 13 to 25, represent seven local chapters of The Mockingbird...
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Cambia Health Solutions Commits $11.5 Million to Address Mental Health Needs in Rural Communities (CAMBIA)
Donation will increase access, improve quality of care and support behavioral health needs January 6, 2021 Cambia Health Solutions and its regional health plans – serving members across Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington – are making philanthropic donations totaling more than $11.5 million to help meet the urgent mental and behavioral health needs intensified by COVID-19 in local rural communities. This funding will increase access to behavioral health services with a focus on: Programs that...
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Washington State: Sliding Scale Therapy from a Black Therapist
Serving Washington state, Alfred white is a LMHCA and Substance Use Disorder Professional. If you think Alfred would be a good fit for you or someone you know, you can access sliding scale services on a $30-$60 basis by visiting https://openpathcollective.org/clinicians/alfred-white/ SKILLS AND EXPERTISE Addiction Trauma and PTSD Substance Abuse Spirituality MODALITIES Telehealth-based ACEs Trauma-Informed Care Guiding Principles Approach Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) From...
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Announcing the Keep Community Campaign!
Inspired by last weekend's blog post I wrote on Rise to Resilience, They Are Human, Too , I decided to create a campaign called Keep Community. Over the next month, I hope to collect $1000 to donate $500 towards the Tacoma Mutual Aid Collective who does incredible work in the local community. The other $500 will go towards creating care packages for unhoused individuals in Pierce County (Washington state). These packages will include items such as: cloth and single-use masks, hand sanitizer,...
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Announcing the Keep Community Campaign!
Inspired by last weekend's blog post I wrote on Rise to Resilience, They Are Human, Too , I decided to create a campaign called Keep Community. Over the next month, I hope to collect $1000 to donate $500 towards the Tacoma Mutual Aid Collective who does incredible work in the local community. The other $500 will go towards creating care packages for unhoused individuals in Pierce County (Washington state). These packages will include items such as: cloth and single-use masks, hand sanitizer,...
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Join Special Guest Father Paul Abernathy for a Zoom Discussion on March 16th, at 7p.m. EST to discuss the Whole People Documentary Series and Trauma-Informed Community Development
On behalf of ACEs Connection , the CTIPP (The Campaign for Trauma -Informed Policy & Practice), and the Relentless School Nurse , we want to invite you to the streaming of parts 4 and 5 of the Whole People documentary series on the weekend o f M arch 12th through March 14th, 2021. We will stream both parts on ACEs Connection in the Transforming Trauma with ACEs Sciences Film Festival community. The documentary viewing will be followed by a discussion with special guest, Father Paul...