Blog

“I am a woman on a mission,” Dr. @Nadine Burke Harris told a packed Campbell Hall at UCSB on Monday night — the talk so well attended that it started 15 minutes late and was video streamed to three adjacent classrooms — “and that mission is to get every pediatrician in America to screen for adverse childhood experiences.” In the arena of pediatric medicine, Burke Harris, founder and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness and author of The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of...

Two documentaries premiering at this week’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York—Madeleine Sackler’s “It’s a Hard Truth Ain’t It” and Marilyn Ness’s “Charm City”—address issues of criminal justice, but they do so in vastly different ways. In Sackler’s film, 13 Indiana prison inmates, many of whom have been convicted of murder or attempted murder, are given cameras to record each other’s reflections. In “Charm City,” Ness takes a more traditional documentary approach as she explores tensions...

One memory comes to me like a photo. It’s a snapshot of my mom’s kitchen, the lights dimmed with just the glow of the stove in the background. A line of women, covered in flour, gather together: my grandmas, great-aunts, family from all backgrounds. They read a recipe card from my paternal grandma, mix and roll dough, then pass it down the line to the pierogi molds. My aunt alternates between sauerkraut, potato and cheese, and prune fillings. My maternal grandma seals the dough pockets on a...

Because of known differences in health care experiences and outcomes by race and ethnicity, researchers in Toronto tested the effectiveness of a Housing First program enhanced with antiracism and antioppression practices. The main principles of the antiracism and antioppression services delivered include empowerment, education, alliance building, language use, and advocacy. In addition, whenever possible, case managers were fluent in participants’ primary language and representative of the...

A lifetime ago, Anne Frank’s family applied for visas to the United States to escape Hitler, but we rejected the Franks and other desperate Jewish refugees. We thought: This is Europe’s problem, not ours, and we don’t want to be overrun by “those people.” Today President Trump is again slamming the door on desperate refugees. Indeed, the Trump administration is going a step further by wrenching children from the arms of asylum-seekers, apparently as a way of inflicting gratuitous cruelty to...

LGBT homeless youth are significantly more likely to face violence, sexual exploitation and early death than their straight peers, according to new research released Wednesday. The study, by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago , was based on a phone survey of 26,161 young people nationwide about their housing status and in-depth interviews with 215 homeless young people ages 13 to 25 who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. It’s part of the Voices of Youth Count, an...

The image of a hard-charging prosecutor imploring a jury to throw the book at a defendant is a familiar scene that has played out in the country’s courtrooms—not to mention on its television screens—for decades. But today, that picture is changing as prosecutors and the public are increasingly recognizing the role these lawyers can play in bringing about a fairer and more equitable criminal justice system. Here we examine legislation and policies that have been introduced, and in some cases...

Californian streets lay witness to 25 percent of the country’s total homeless population, with 42 percent of those being chronically homeless — federally defined as a homeless individual with a disabling condition who has been homeless for over a year or having at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years. From 2016 to 2017, the state also saw the largest increase in the number of residents who are homeless — more than 16,000 people. While homelessness in San Francisco is a...

On April 9, the Treasury Department debuted the first details of a new and far-reaching community-based tax incentive. In 18 states, newly designated zones could see a wave of new investment under a little-known provision of the recent tax overhaul. These opportunity zones are designed to lure investment to the nation’s poorest urban, suburban, and rural communities with a powerful tax incentive. By the accounts of some experts, the program could deliver a vital injection to areas that...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Gun deaths have fallen in California over a 16-year period ending in 2015, driven largely by a decline in gang violence and black homicides a recent and rare scientific study of firearm violence has found. Researchers at the University of California, Davis published their findings in the May issue of the journal Annals of Epidemiology after reviewing 50,921 firearm deaths recorded in California between 2000 and 2015. The University provided the study results on Monday. The...

Thanks to an explosion in scientific research now possible with imaging technologies, such as fMRI and SPECT, experts can actually see how the brain develops. This helps explain why exposure to adverse childhood experiences can so deeply influence and change a child's brain and thus their physical and emotional health and quality of life across their lifetime. The above time-lapse study was conducted over 10 years. The darker colors represent brain maturity (brain development). I have added...

The California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) in collaboration with ACEs Connection is hosting a three-part webinar learning series for advocates and policymakers interested in addressing childhood adversity through public policy. Advocates across the country are asking how best to address childhood adversity at the local, state and national levels and support the right policies to advance these efforts. Momentum is growing across the country to do just that. In this learning...