Join hosts Ingrid Cockhren, CEO of PACEs Connection, and Mathew Portell, PACEs Connection director of communities, for this encore episode of their interview with Melissa T. Merrick, Ph.D., president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America (PCA America), wherein she focusses on “celebrating the possibility of prevention,” and the importance of examining the socio-political conditions we as a society must address to help all people thrive.
For the month of March, PACEs Connection’s History. Culture. Trauma. (HTC) honors Women’s History Month by featuring women in the positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) science movement.
During this wide-ranging discussion, Merrick touches on the importance of public health and what we as a society do collectively to affect conditions, as well as the importance of positive childhood experiences (PCEs), and partnerships to achieve prevention.
"We must become 'comfortable with being uncomfortable' to change outcomes caused by 'racist and inequitable policies,'"Merrick said.
“There is a lot of trauma, but there is also a lot of opportunity for healing,” Merrick said of our post-pandemic society wherein there was terrific inequity in healthcare, as well as who was affected by Covid 19.
PCA America is the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect. Merrick has more than 20 years of clinical, research, and leadership experience related to the etiology, course, and prevention of child abuse and neglect.
Previously Merrick was a senior epidemiologist at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
Merrick is recognized as one of the country’s foremost experts on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). In partnership with the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Child Abuse and Neglect, she served for eight years as the lead scientist for the adverse childhood experiences (ACES) study at CDC and is the lead author of CDC’s Vital Signs: ACEs, the most nationally representative report on the topic.
Fromher bio: Merrick successfully leverages her significant clinical and research experiences to communicate and disseminate the critical public health importance of preventing early adversity to key stakeholders with diverse priorities, backgrounds, and knowledge, including legislators, business and civic leaders, and members of the academic and medical communities. She is one of the principal architects of Thriving Families, Safer Children: A National Commitment to Well-being, which aims to reshape child welfare in the United States by focusing explicitly on equity and prevention. Thriving Families unites PCA America, the Children’s Bureau, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Casey Family Programs, among numerous other local partners, to proactively create the conditions and contexts for strong families and communities across the country.
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