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As Latanja Madison’s release date from prison inched closer, she felt more terrified than elated. During a decade behind bars at the California Institution for Women in Corona, the 55-year-old Madison underwent multiple orthopedic surgeries and now uses a walker. Her immediate family members passed away during her incarceration, creating grave doubts she would have a support system. She feared leaving prison may lead to a worse fate – habitual homelessness. “I’m more blue collar than white...

Marjorie Sims is no stranger to advocating for women and families. At Ascend at the Aspen Institute , she helps foster initiatives and networks to build opportunities for low-income families to advance in society. The organization looks at education, economic security, and health among other things and does so with an intersectional outlook. Sims is one of more than 50 participants from around the world who convened at Schloss Leopoldskron to participate in the program Healthy Children,...

Child care offers a safe space for children to grow and learn while their families are at work, making it a critical resource to support healthy development. However, child care is unaffordable for the majority of working parents, especially for low-income and black and Hispanic working parents. This research brief provides insight and analysis about the challenges families face in affording childcare, which can exacerbate inequities in early childhood health and development. [For more on...

Over the last 20 years, youth violence dropped precipitously (and unexpectedly) in California. Law enforcement arrested minors 22,601 times for violent crimes in 1994. That arrest rate dropped 68 percent, to 7,291 arrests two decades later, in 2017. In addition, a collective turning away from harshly punitive incarceration for kids, and a movement toward community-based diversion and services, have helped keep kids out of juvenile lockups. (But not all kids—racial disparities in the juvenile...

The path toward policies that would buffer Philadelphia workers from secondary traumatic stress began with a simple ask: Come see a movie. That movie was a documentary, Portraits of Professional CAREgivers: Their Passion, Their Pain , viewed by an audience of 250 as part of a 2016 film festival hosted by the Philadelphia ACE Task Force (PATF). The screening launched a three-year effort to put secondary traumatic stress on the radar of Philadelphia’s policy-makers—a journey of relationships...

. . . our biggest problem in our work is that people can’t believe the changes we make in people’s neural patterns in just 24 hours over 3 days. “I don’t see why,” he said. “Trauma can totally rewire your brain in five minutes.”

Found this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiMjTzCnbNQ

Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter March 2019 Hi Folks, Welcome to the March issue of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter...FYI, March is National Traumatic Brain Injury Awareness Month & Multiple Sclerosis Education and Awareness Month, more...

Upstreamists are changemakers pioneering practices that improve health by blending medical and social care . In this series of profiles, HealthBegins highlights some of these bold leaders and their innovations, in settings large and small. Their stories show us that the journey upstream is not only necessary — it’s possible. The People’s partnership began in 2012, when two puzzle pieces clicked together. The clinic’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Louis Appel, a pediatrician with an interest in...

If you’ve watched “Madagascar,” you’re sure to have seen King Julien leading the jungle in a rousing chant of “I Like to Move It, Move It” while doing just that. It turns out King Julien was onto something. If the iconic lemur were a scientist, he might have written a dazzling paper on what our ancestors already knew: Dance can help heal what ails you. As it is, more and more researchers studying the healing power of rhythmic movement on people who’ve experienced trauma from Adverse...

I knew I didn’t have the best childhood possible, but I didn’t realize it was that bad until after my life crashed down around me at age 42. When I realized I had built my adult life on lies, I had to go back to ground zero and figure out why and get to the core so I could build the rest of my life on a foundation of truth.

In foreground, Dr. Donielle Prince (l) and Saundra Davis (r) ____________________________ Saundra Davis, a financial coach and consultant who trains other coaches on building resilience among the working poor, knew she had met her partner in helping people deal with their “money disorders” when she first met Dr. Donielle Prince in Sacramento at a black women’s gathering in 2015. Dr. Prince works with ACEs Connection as its San Francisco Bay Area regional community facilitator. She also...