Self-Healing Communities: A Transformational Process Model for Improving Intergenerational Health Laura Porter, Kimberly Martin, PhD, and Robert Anda, MD, MS Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, June 2016 http://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2016/06/self-healing-communities.html

[ Ed. note: Following is a media release published yesterday by Mathematica Policy Research. This follows on the heals of the report, "Self-Healing Communities" that Laura Porter, Dr. Robert Anda and WHO wrote for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Both reports and executive summaries are attached to this blog post. Both reports are significant, because they show that community ACEs initiatives -- with "modest investments and limited staff" -- are solving some of our most intractable...

In 2015, Dr. Beth Pletcher, a pediatrician and associate professor specializing in genetics, was at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Washington D.C. when she heard two speakers that forever changed her work with medical students. Dr. Beth Pletcher “I went to two talks on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that were so mind-boggling to me that I decided on my drive back to New Jersey that I had to do something about it,”says Pletcher, director of the Division...

By Annabelle Timsit, Quartz, March 21, 2020 James is 3 years old and presents with chronic asthma, allergies, and eczema. Lola is five and overweight. Emma is 11 and struggles to focus on her homework, often gets into fights at school, and has trouble sleeping. These (fictional) children may seem like they have little in common—but that’s because you don’t have all the information. You don’t know, for example, that James’ father has bipolar disorder and misuses his prescription medication.

By Jeremy Loudenback, Chronicle of Social Change, September 19, 2019 Soon after being appointed California’s first-ever surgeon general, Nadine Burke Harris took off on a barnstorming tour across the state to talk about adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress, an issue she calls “the biggest public health crisis facing California today.” Before the pediatrician was appointed to her position in January by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Harris had founded and led the Center for Youth Wellness,...

From Child Trends, March 6, 2020 Child Trends’ new project with MDRC, “ Reconnecting Youth: Putting Out-of-School, Out-of-Work Youth on a Path to Self-Sufficiency ,” is seeking information about programs that provide services to help young people ages 16 to 24 advance on education and employment pathways. This project is focused on the population of young people who are out of work and out of school, sometimes called disconnected or opportunity youth. The information gathered will result in...

April 11-12, Bellevue, WA Registration open - for more information and to register: http://dshscjc.com/

By Claudia Rowe, May 3, 2019, The Seattle Times Rising Strong Twice a day for months, Cicelia Bracken and her children tracked the progress of their home-under-construction, watching as beams were erected to sketch the outlines of an imagined life with a working kitchen. At 31, Bracken hadn’t had a place where she could shut the door and sit with her thoughts for years. Nor had her four young children, all of them under 6, who peered into the windows, jostling for first pick of the new...

A scan done in March by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) through StateNet of bills introduced in 2017 that specifically include adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the text produced a surprising volume of bills (close of 40) in a large number of states (18). A scan done a year ago produced less than a handful. NCSL is a bipartisan organization that serves both state legislators and their staffs. The shear volume of bills in so many states represents a promising...

He says: Addiction shouldn’t be called “addiction”. It should be called “ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking”. He says: Ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking (what traditionalists call addiction) is a normal response to the adversity experienced in childhood, just like bleeding is a normal response to being stabbed. He says: The solution to changing the illegal or unhealthy ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior of opioid addiction is to address a person’s adverse childhood...