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The percentage of young inner-city students who have difficulty paying attention at school and struggle with basic literacy skills was three times higher for children who also were victims of abuse, neglect and other trauma, according to a new study featured in a medical journal by several New Jersey researchers. Research has already shown abused and traumatized children are more likely to suffer from health problems. Less clear is how these traumatic experiences interfere with their success...

An hour or so before Thursday's sunrise, Laura Ruhling and Barbara Leonard met in a York parking lot with one goal in mind: Find homeless people living out on the streets. Years ago, the women met through York County Children and Youth Services. Leonard was a case manager while Ruhling worked for Catholic Charities, which CYS had contracted with. [For more of this story, written by Gordon Rago, go...

A parent's incarceration has immediate, devastating effects on a family. Now, Virginia Tech and University of Toronto researchers say there may be a longer term risk: Men who as children experienced a family member's incarceration are approximately twice as likely to have a heart attack in later adulthood in comparison with men who were not exposed to such a childhood trauma. The study, by Bradley White, an assistant professor with the Virginia Tech Department of Psychology, and Esme...

When it comes to preventing violence, Danny Bane holds all the aces. ACES, that is. That’s the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study done by the Centers for Disease Control. Bane says the study’s insights can change lives and he plans to use them in his job as Umatilla County’s first-ever violence prevention coordinator. Bane knows a little something about childhood trauma and violence. Alcohol affected his home life. When his beloved older sister, a young mother of four, was...

R.J. Gillespie, M.D., and his team are working with parents at The Children’s Clinic to interrupt the cycle of adverse childhood experiences. Health System Transformation (HST) makes this project possible – and makes preventive and lifelong health priorities, by doing things differently and promoting local innovation. It’s part of the Oregon Pediatric Improvement Partnership sponsored by Health Share of Oregon, a coordinated care organization serving Oregon Health Plan...

The Obama administration is working to build evidence supporting increased federal and state spending on anti-violence, social service and other programs to improve life in poor neighborhoods and limit the growth in health care costs. The move comes despite more limited reports done by outside groups and is designed to create a paper trail that makes the need for and efficacy of the programs for Medicare and Medicaid recipients indisputable...

Study after study has proven that when children are sequestered in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty , their educational and economic opportunities are stunted, creating enduring cycles of poverty. But a new paper , written by a team of researchers led by the Stanford economist Raj Chetty, indicates that these findings have yet another critical element: Concentrated poverty can be significantly more detrimental to young boys than to young girls. In America it’s generally been...

Progress has undoubtedly been made since the days of explicit segregation, and most white people no longer openly advocate for segregation in neighborhoods, schools, and offices. When speaking to researchers , many even argue that integration is important and necessary. At the same time, old racial stereotypes die hard, and perceptions that black people are lazy, criminal, and dim-witted contribute to the maintenance of segregation and the inequalities that result from it. Despite laws...

   Sandra Bloom asked 75 people to turn toward one another and begin with questions: What is your name? How are you feeling right now? What is your goal for today? Whom at this table can you ask for help?    Those questions, or a variation of them, are part of the toolkit from the Sanctuary Model, a method of building an inclusive, democratic, trauma-informed organization from bottom to top.    “You will be shocked at what a difference it makes if you...

The Capital Region  HEARTS Initiative would like to share an opportunity to take part in a free online course training on ACEs, resilience, and a "whole person" model for ACE response called Restorative Integral Support (RIS). The online course was produced by Associate Professor Heather Larkin and her team at the University at Albany, a leading partner in the HEARTS collaborative. With 13 course modules, making up a total of approximately 12 hours...

   Not long ago, Jan Shepard, Public Health Division Director of Buncombe County Health and Human Services, attended a presentation about the county’s still-in-the-works family justice center. Planners envision the center as a nexus of care and remedy—a place, for instance, where a survivor of domestic violence could speak with law enforcement officials, counselors and advocates in a single “safe place,” rather than having to navigate a fragmented system of...

A child's grades in school might suffer if a parent is suffering from depression, according to a new study. Researchers found that Swedish teens received lower grades during their final year in school if either of their parents had previously been diagnosed with depression. The difference in grades was noticeable but not huge, said senior author Brian Lee, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University's Dornsife School of Public Health in Philadelphia. "It's...