Childhood Adversity, Social Inequality, and Public Policy

"Such policies could focus on parenting, parent mental health and substance use, and poverty reduction, among other targets."

Parenting is the first one mentioned.  A new kind of parenting education that reaches everyone, everywhere could be a tremendously powerful tool for good.  Yet I see very little movement in that direction...with one exception.

Exactly!

Dr. McEwen, we so need to bring esteemed historian and patriot Heather Cox Richardson, PhD, into the conversation and exhortations on the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences.  

Were Dr. Richardson, author of the almost daily "Letters from an American" to frame our nation’s history through the lens of the traumas our peoples have endured, it would explain so much about our current collective trauma. Were she to link for her thousands of followers the science of how past traumas of the genocide of Native Americans, our nation being built by the backs and brains of kidnapped and enslaved people, our ruthless negation of Native American culture and ways — kidnapping young children to “wash the Indian out of them — our enslavement of Chinese, Mexican and other peoples, our imprisonment of Japanese people during WWII, our own colonization of regions that would become states -- perhaps it would help others see better how it is that we are where we are now.

We are a nation built on stolen land, built with stolen labor, made the wealthiest in the world by taking what wasn’t ours and building on it, virtually excluding the possibility of generational wealth building by any race or caste other than whites of European heritage. Sure there are some exceptions. But even until the 1960s, they were rare.

Our nation’s people and history are now laid bare by a racial reckoning, generations of trauma stored in bodies that have received less than second-rate healthcare and many people crowded into reservations that don’t even have electricity and running water! We are at a crossroads of generations of environmental racism that is killing thousands not only at the hand of industrialists dumping toxic wastes next to areas populated by Indigenous and Black and Brown peoples, but now we are seeing all areas of our nation vulnerable to the environmental racism and greed that is causing catastrophic tornadoes, deadly heat waves, climate-changed evoked wildfires and floods of Biblical proportion. In a land of such wealth and with such power to STOP this insanity if we could reach enough policymakers of good character, integrity, and GUTs to do the next right thing, without thought of the political consequence.

Both Native and African Americans have born so many generations of stress, poverty, inequity and hate-filled racism that their bodies — many deprived of access to healthy food and opportunities for recreation in green spaces afforded the “higher classes” — have bodies that are giving out under the epigenetic stresses of carried shame, hating themselves on behalf of Whites, and lack of access to decent medical care. Equitable medical care.

Let’s talk to Dr. Richardson about incorporating the trauma lens — the science of the harm generation upon generation of traumas have caused — into her Letters from an American? Each day it is THE BEST read of the day. Perhaps we should ask her about including the column it here in PACEs Connection! After all, we at PACES Connection have taken a stand to bring our learnings about Historical Trauma in America to our almost 55,000 members, and would love to see this information go much further into the hearts and minds of every American, in hopes of creating cross-sector communities built on truth and compassion.

If more people could make the connection between our brutal history and the shortened lifespans, health problems, differences in child and maternal health outcomes, inequitable investment in the social determinants of health between White children and Black and Brown children, surely more people would be outraged and demand the policy changes for which you and I and most of our members of PACEs Connection, the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) and the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives members yearn.

Thanks, Dr. McEwen, for your post and your brilliant treatise: Critical Assessment of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study at 20 Years.

Peace, and thank you for your many posts about our need to leverage this PACES science in policymaking. Were we to do so, perhaps our country would truly someday be a land of equal opportunity for all.

Carey Sipp