Blog

By Dr. Stephanie Irby Coard, 2/1/22, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ Dr. Stephanie Irby Coard, joins HOPE’s Director of Training and Technical Assistance, Amanda Winn, for the first vlog in our new series, HOPE Block by Block. We are kicking off our series by highlighting the impactful work of Black practitioners, scholars, researchers, and community activists during the month of February. In this first episode, Dr. Coard will address the building block of emotional growth,...

This is the second of two stunning illustrations showing how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affected the family of Cendie Stanford, founder of the nonprofit ACEs Matter. Each leaf represents a family member affected by ACEs, and the health consequences they suffered. When Cendie Stanford, founder and president of ACEs Matter , finished drawing “My ACEs Tree—Genealogy” —she saw clearly the remarkable number of ACEs her grandparents, parents, children and extended family had experienced.

By Jan Hoffman, Photo: Eric Baradat/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images, The New York Times, February 1, 2022 Hundreds of Native American tribes that have suffered disproportionately high addiction and death rates during the opioid epidemic agreed on Tuesday to a tentative settlement of $590 million with Johnson & Johnson and the country’s three largest drug distributors. Together with a deal struck last fall between the distributors and the Cherokee Nation for $75 million, the tribes will...

An FBI Special Agent for 23 years, the last three as the Special Agent in Charge of all operations and activities in the State of Mississippi, Christopher Freeze was well acquainted with the pervasive and generational effects of ACEs, or adverse childhood experiences. But during most of his tenure with the FBI, Freeze says, “ACEs was not on my radar at all.” Freeze’s Southern accent belies his roots in Manchester, Tennessee, a small town 50 miles outside of Nashville, where he milked cows...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site — abuseresearch.info — that focuses on the effects of abuse, and includes research articles on PACEs. Every month, she posts the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs, PCEs and PACEs. Thank you, Harise!! — Jane Stevens] Child Abuse Ponton E, Courtemanche R, Singh TK, et. al. Assessing the Social Determinants of Health and Adverse Childhood Experience in Patients Attending a...

By Sylvia Cheuy, Mark Cabaj, and Liz Weaver, Illustration: Hugo Herrera, Stanford Social Innovation Review, January 4, 2022 The collective impact framework has gained interest worldwide for mobilizing high-impact and lasting change on a broad array of complex social issues. As highlighted in this series , for the past decade, countless examples have validated the collective impact framework and deepened understandings of it as a field of practice. Looking ahead to the next decade, what’s...

By Caitlin Gibson, Photo: iStock, The Washington Post, January 29, 2022 Andria Hayes-Birchler had barely begun to comprehend her new reality as a single parent before the pandemic hit. In March 2020, she had an 8-month-old infant and a 4-year-old, and her soon-to-be-ex-husband had recently moved from their home in Washington, D.C., to California. What followed was a year and a half of unrelenting crisis as she struggled to balance her career as a research consultant with caring for her two...

Image above represents the " State ACEs and TI Laws & Resolutions clickable map " The steady growth in ACEs and Trauma-Informed laws and resolutions has continued since the last snapshot in PACEs Connection in June 2021 . That article reported that state legislatures and governors in dozens of states enacted nearly 60 laws and resolutions that specially reference adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) or trauma in the years 2019 and 2020. A new tally shows that In 2021 alone, another 36...

By Cory Turner, Image: LA Johnson/NPR, National Public Radio, January 27, 2022 Blink and you could have missed it. For six months, the United States experimented with an idea that's new here but is already a backstitch in the social fabric of many wealthy nations : a monthly cash payment to help families cover the costs of raising children. Less than a year in, though, this U.S. experiment, known as the expanded child tax credit, has already been unwound by a deadlocked Congress . Still,...

By John Fensterwald, Photo: Allison Shelley/Eduimages, EdSource, January 31, 2022 I n coming weeks, California will embark on a massive undertaking to convert several thousand schools in low-income neighborhoods into centers of community life and providers of vital services for families as well as students. Known as community schools, they will be established over the next seven years. New York and Maryland are among states that are investing in community schools, but California’s $3 billion...

By Karen Baynes-Dunning, Photo: Unsplash, The Imprint, January 31, 2022 I titled this essay Stop Blaming the “Uncooperative Mother,” because it has become a racial trope used by well-intentioned people who work with families throughout our nation’s child welfare system. Over nearly 30 years of working in and around the child welfare system, I have heard variations on this theme: the angry mother; the hostile mother; the disrespectful mother; the antagonistic mother; the aggressive mother;...

By Anna North, Image: Getty Images/fStop, Vox, January 27, 2022 That’s the question facing a lot of Americans as we stagger into 2022 still carrying the burden of a pandemic on our shoulders, plus some other burdens including but not limited to the i ncreasingly devastating effects of climate change, the real and disturbing threats to democracy , and the seeming inability of the highest levels of the US government to address these dangers . It’s even boring to talk about how much any of us —...