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Just Released: Findings from the 2016 Pulse Check Multi-sector partnerships play an increasingly significant role in the movement to improve heath, equity, and economic prosperity. These partnerships recognize that many of our most pressing challenges defy sector boundaries, and cannot be effectively addressed by any one institution alone. Progress Along the Pathway to Health System Transformation: A Pulse Check on Multi-Sector Partnerships is the only survey of its kind to ask leaders...

Jane Stevens posted a descriptive blurb about this title, How Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You , back in January, and I thought, “Why the heck not?” After all, I read everything I can get my hands on, searching for that magic elixir that will fix the feeling that I’ve called by many names over the years: Despair. Fear. Hole in the soul. Nameless dread. Whatever you want to call it, some of you with a high ACE score might know what I’m talking about. (I also experienced a very traumatic...

Many family courts across the nation routinely fail the most vulnerable in our society: mothers and their children in crisis seeking a life free from abuse. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice released the Saunders Report , a study that found the standard and required domestic violence training received by judges, lawyers, and custody evaluators, does not adequately prepare them to handle abuse cases. Inadequately trained professionals tend to believe the myth that mothers frequently...

U.S. teens with autism are four times more likely to visit an emergency room than those without the disorder, a new report says. The Penn State College of Medicine researchers said the likelihood of an ER visit for a teen with autism increased five-fold from 2005 to 2013. The findings suggest that young people with autism may require better access to primary and specialist care, the researchers said. "We believe if their regular medical and behavioral specialist services served them better,...

Brett Merfish had a list of reasons why Texas should raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18. She pointed to research showing that states that had already adopted the practice saw crime and recidivism reduced and better outcomes for the juveniles and their families. She also noted that short-term expenses associated with the change were far less than forecast, and that, over the long term, spending on treatment and intervention is far more cost effective than throwing teens behind...

It's been a long time since I was in school but I still remember the free breakfast, lunch, snack and milk I got for many years. It made school a place I loved going. Kids can't focus or succeed as well when hungry, which I think most of us know even without a study. But, here's an excerpt from a recent study on how early hunger impacts early education. The new study, published in the latest issue of the journal Child Development , suggests that such early experience of hunger in the family...

Last September, a very twenty-first-century type of story appeared on the company blog of the ride-sharing app Lyft. “Long-time Lyft driver and mentor, Mary, was nine months pregnant when she picked up a passenger the night of July 21st,” the post began. “About a week away from her due date, Mary decided to drive for a few hours after a day of mentoring.” You can guess what happened next. Mary, who was driving in Chicago, picked up a few riders, and then started having contractions. “Since...

On March 15, Gov. Kate Brown visited Tillamook to hear about the work that Tillamook Schools are doing around trauma informed care and Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs. Gov. Brown, along with Chief Education Officer Lindsey Capps, met with the Tillamook School District leadership team to discuss the innovative work that Tillamook Schools have taken on. The District used presentations from student Brandon Reichow, teacher Kimberli Callahan and student-teacher, Tania Flores, who each told...

Dillon folks are hard at work creating a healthier community. The Beaverhead County ACEs Task Force — going gangbusters since February 2016 — has coalesced into a driving force for the wider trauma-informed community movement taking hold across the state. “We have been moving and working like mad,” said Melainya Ryan, task force chairwoman. “Our community is ripe.” ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences that affect health and wellness across the life span, as Helena-based expert Katie...

t’s easy to see why collective impact —the commitment of a group of important cross-sector actors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem—caught fire in 2010. During an economic downturn, when few new resources were available, a voice said there was a way to do more with what we already had. The concept offered hope for achieving results at the scale we desired, even though we were feeling constrained. And thank goodness. Collective impact both validated work that had been...

Tobacco use is now concentrated among the least advantaged socioeconomic groups in society, according to a new study at the Colorado School of Public Health at University of Colorado (CU) Anschutz. The findings show that most remaining smokers in the United States have low income, no college education, a disability or no health insurance. [For more of this story, written by Traci Pedersen, go to ...

“Beyond losing your child, hearing that they have been acting out sexually against other children is the worst news you can get,” says Janet Routzen, executive director of the White Buffalo Calf Woman Society (WBCWS) on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. In addition to providing services and shelter to victims of domestic violence , sexual assault and stalking, the White Buffalo Calf Woman Society provides sexual assault advocacy services, conducts education and outreach among...