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It's so nice to read about how some teachers are utilizing ACEs science and how movies like Paper Tigers are helping educate teachers about adversity, symptoms of trauma and ways to support kids in getting more regulated and less stressed. It sounds like a different framework is helping teachers and administrator too. I'm not surprised test scores are improving as well as behavior. I'm glad the behavior charts are getting tossed. “I’ve noticed that a lot of times we discipline them and tell...

“You guys are creeps!” Wilma seethed as the police officer assisted her into the backseat of his car. ” Her gravelly voice echoes in my mind as I think about our Wednesday night Street Medicine rounds. Wilma, a woman known to many downtown, uniformly refused to leave her portion of sidewalk, even on the coldest of nights, determined to protect the city’s inhabitants from infectious diseases. Upon arriving at the scene, the ambulance driver was initially angry at receiving her 30th call about...

Using evidence-based programs in juvenile justice means more than pulling brand-name interventions off the shelf, says a leader in the field. Policymakers and practitioners have a large body of research to draw on to determine whether a particular program has promise, including those of the mom-and-pop variety, said Shay Bilchik, director of the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University. But knowing a program has potential isn’t the only factor for success. Instead,...

The Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will provide nearly $2.8 million to seven organizations to support minority and disadvantaged children and youth who have been exposed to childhood trauma. The grants were made under the Communities Addressing Childhood Trauma (ACT) program, which aims to develop and evaluate new approaches to promoting healthy behaviors among youth who have experienced significant incidents of trauma. The ACT program hopes to...

I was what you would call a sickly child: severe allergies, persistent throat infections, insomnia, and digestive issues plagued me before the arrival of Kindergarten. As I approached adolescence, migraines took over and became the primary focus. My pediatrician sent me to every specialist available, with the exception of a therapist or mental health expert. To my doctor, the migraines made no sense, and all other ailments were overshadowed while he gave me new diets and medications to try.

“This may be too personal,” Becca Reed warned me as she looked at herself in the gym mirror and prepared to lift a couple of barbells. “But the fat on my upper and lower back no longer touch.” As noted in my last column (which introduced the Reeds), Becca is involved in an experiment. She has vowed alongside her husband James and their son Drew — all of them suffering from obesity — to embrace two potentially life-changing goals: work out three times a week with trainer Mike “Bonebreaker”...

In case you have missed every study and article written on the subject: Paid leave improves gender equality in both the professional and personal spheres, improves the health and well-being of parents and children alike, and is, in the long-run, beneficial to employers. Perhaps this is why it is guaranteed by almost every country in the world, the exceptions being Papua New Guinea, Suriname, Tonga, and also the United States. This is often justified by the claim that implementing mandatory...

If you fear you’re doing irreparable damage to your body because your white-collar job keeps you sitting at your desk from 9 to 5, or you regularly spend entire weekends sprawled out on your couch binge-watching Netflix, there’s some good news just out from sports medicine researchers. According to a study published in t he Lancet , all is not lost. You may be able to make up for your increased risk of death due to a sedentary lifestyle by engaging in enough physical activity. So just how...

Focusing on High-Need, High-Cost Patients Meaningful improvement in the health system will require improvement in care for those patients using it the most: people with multiple chronic conditions. Within this clinically diverse group are patients who remain stable for years with appropriate treatment, others who live with extreme functional limitations, and still others with persistent behavioral health challenges or related social needs, like housing or food, that exacerbate their...

Jonathan Goodman can recall most of the lectures he’s attended at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He can recite detailed instructions given more than a year ago about how to conduct a physical. But at the end of his second year, the 27-year-old M.D.-Ph.D. student could not remember any class dedicated to addiction medicine. Then he recalled skipping class months earlier. Reviewing his syllabus, he realized he had missed the sole lecture dedicated to that topic. “I wasn’t tested...

When Chris Wills got out of prison, he could not find a job. He applied, but no one would hire him because of his record. And then he started using drugs again. In a moment of desperation, he went to talk with a friend who ran programs in the local jail. His friend didn't tell him to just get clean. He didn't tell him to just get a job. He gave him some advice that, in the moment, Wills thought was just weird. His friend told him to go meet with some community organizers from a group called...

This article from Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine [ LINK HERE ] has an interesting take on the concept of resilience. I hear this phrase often, "resilience trumps ACE's." Here is what they say: "The good news is resilience—self-regulation of emotions, optimism and hope—can trump ACEs. (In fact, regardless of ACE status, children lacking resilience fare worse.) Children with ACEs who also have resilience had one-fifth the odds of having mental or emotional problems like ADHD or...