Tagged With "African Americans"
Blog Post
Question of the Month - Is Child Adversity Linked to Ethnicity?
Hi Community! Here in Trinidad and Tobago, we are probably more diverse in terms of ethnicity than many of our Caribbean neighbours - a callaloo of sorts (Remember the national anthem proclaims: "...Here every creed and race find an equal place..." ) Well, research overseas shows that there is a difference in how children experience adversity based on their ethnicity. In the USA in particular, there are neighbourhoods that are predominantly white and others where the majority of persons are...
Blog Post
Building a Multi-System Trauma-Informed Collaborative.
Since the effects of childhood trauma do not play out in isolation, an effective response to child trauma should benefit not only children but the communities in which they live. This feeds into what we know from studies about factors that impact a child's growth - they occur within the family, community and also are climate-related. Multiple studies reveal the extremely high percentage of youth in contact with the law and under the care of social services who have been exposed to violence...
Blog Post
Florida Study Reveals Link Between ACEs and Sex Trafficking of Minors
Hi everyone! We trust you are doing well and enjoying the Community and benefiting from the resources being shared by our members. It is the 25th day of the month and you know what that means - we are looking at the issue of ACEs in the context of human trafficking. Today we have another resource to show the link between childhood adversity and the vulnerability of persons with high ACE scores to human trafficking. In this 2016 study, " Human Trafficking of Minors and Childhood Adversity in...
Blog Post
Still I Rise - A Documentary Highlighting Sex Trafficking (with ACEs Lurking in the Background).
Hey everyone! We hope the weekend has been a blast so far. As you know, we rarely post on the weekend. However, although it is Sunday, the date is the 25th of April, so we are sharing this post in fulfilment of our promise to highlight the issue of ACEs and Human Trafficking on the 25th day of every month. We did submit a post on the topic on 1st April to observe the 10th Anniversary of the laying in Parliament of the Trafficking In Persons Bill in Trinidad and Tobago. If you missed it,...
Blog Post
Can We Talk About George Floyd? [Al Jazeera article]
Hi everyone. As everyone knows, the year 2020 was defined by a series of events, many of which linger to this day. Covid-19, as devastating as it and government efforts to curb it have been, may have been eclipsed for a time by the reporting and riots which ensued after the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in the USA. Last week, the tension of a 3-week trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd ended with a guilty...
Blog Post
May 6-7: Canadian Sexual Exploitation Summit: Disrupt Demand
Hello everyone! Are you interested in Trauma and ACEs as they relate to child sexual exploitation and human trafficking? Well, there is an upcoming Summit which you should enjoy. It will take place this week so be ready to take action. This year's edition of the Canadian Sexual Exploitation Summit will be held virtually on May 6 and 7 with the theme: "Disrupt Demand". With over 50 Canadian, American and international speakers and presenters, the Agenda of the Summit will cover a wide cross...
Member
Kim R. Brown
Blog Post
Bryan Stevenson Nailed It!
Hi everyone. If you missed the Feature Address of Picower Institute's symposium on Early Life Stress and Mental Health, you missed a treat. Bryan Stevenson blew everyone away with his flawless talk on racial injustice and how this has shaped the American judicial system to the devastation of persons, many of whom have suffered childhood and generational trauma. It was one of the most powerful opening talks of any conference I have ever heard! We shared excerpts of his talk using Twitter...
Blog Post
Criticizing ACEs in Peer Reviewed Professional Journals Impairs Child Abuse Treatment
Criticizing ACEs in Peer Reviewed Professional Journals Impairs Child Abuse Treatment Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH May 23, 2021 As a family doc practicing in San Diego I was privileged to hear Dr. Vincent Felitti talk about his inspired development of the ACEs questionnaire and its association with many adult mental and physical diseases directly from him only a few years after his original insight. Yet, although I had a lively clinic and learned how to manage a vast array of medical...
Blog Post
Barbados Research into Childhood Malnutrition and Maltreatment.
Happy Friday everybody! As you know, with that comes some weekend reading for you. Today, we are sharing a report from research conducted in Barbados that links childhood malnutrition and maltreatment to personality disorders which persist into adulthood. It is the work of Rebecca S. Hock and her colleagues using data from the 47 year longitudinal Barbados Nutrition Study. Published in Psychiatry Research (Volume 269, November 2018, Pages 301-308), the work, " Childhood malnutrition and...
Blog Post
ADHD in first- and second-generation immigrant children: A nationwide cohort study in Sweden
Hi everyone, it's Food For Thought Friday again and we are excited to bring to you this study from Europe on ADHD prevalence in children and adolescents. The reason is that some of the respondents in this study are of Caribbean heritage! With the paucity of Caribbean research in this area, we are always on the hunt for global research that includes respondents from or in the Caribbean. Ahem, in case you missed it, that was a subtle ask for you to share whatever research you may come across...
Blog Post
Resilience and Children in Residential Care - What the Data Shows
Hi everyone. The recent discovery of the bodies of 215 children at a residential school in Canada has led to an explosion of discussion online and many calls for the federal government of Canada to implement a series of recommendations from a previous national commission to investigate similar issues. Also arising are discussions on the state of residential care for children as a whole and the degree to which such institutions are properly addressing the inherent needs of the children under...
Blog Post
Wellness Wednesday - A Self-Care Resilience Resource
Hi everyone. On this Wellness Wednesday, we are pleased to share with you a resource from the USA to help implement self-care towards building resilience. The American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 3 has developed a visual resource adapted from the ACEs Aware Self-Care tool . The handout is print-ready and available in English , Spanish , Amharic , Arabic , Chinese , Farsi and Vietnamese . Please see the attachment to this article for the English version. We will add it to the...
Blog Post
How Does Historic Trauma Impact Blacks Swimmers?
Good Monday morning everybody! It's warm weather time in the global North and the "wet season" here in the Caribbean. In times before 2020, this would have signalled a lot of beach and river bathing in Trinidad and loads of people headed to Tobago to enjoy the more attractive beaches there. Now, beach-going and sea-bathing are restricted as part of the current national State of Emergency. With those thoughts in mind, that may explain why this recent article from an African American mother...
Blog Post
About Our Livestream Guests
Are you ready? It's almost time! Yes, we are 2 hours away from the start of our Father's Day Livestream titled, "ACEs & The Father Wound - A Cross Cultural Discussion" . Join us for the discussion via this link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgeVx3-3EFo With us today will be Mr. Mark Nicoll, Dr. Kenneth Niles, Queen Mother Dianne Sears and Dr. Joanne Spence. Dr. Spence will do double-duty as moderator for this afternoon's discussion. Their bios are below so you will have some context...
Blog Post
How to (Mentally) Prepare for Hurricane Season
Hi everyone! We are well into the Hurricane Season for 2021 and today Trinidad and Tobago was put on a Yellow Alert due to the passage of a weather system. For those interested in learning more about the possibilities of the hurricane season, try to register for the Pre-Hurricane Conference 2021 put on by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies ( IFRC ). It runs from Wednesday 23rd to Friday 25th June 2021. While there is great value in developing a Disaster Plan...
Blog Post
Building a Restorative Restart to School in the Fall
As we look towards the reopening of in-person instruction in the fall, planning and reimagining for a restorative restart to our school systems that emphasizes student and educator mental health is a priority. In addition, there is a windfall of one-time funding coming to districts from federal and local funds for just this purpose. Recently a wise educator said to me, ‘you know, if you want to get to the hearts and minds of school leaders to make changes for the fall you need to do so by...
Blog Post
Psychologists Advocate for Improved Treatment for Developmental Trauma
Hi everybody. This article contains some good news! According to an article on the website of the American Psychological Association (APA), a growing body of research is leading many psychologists to call for the inclusion of complex childhood trauma in various classification systems. "To better serve children who faced poverty, homelessness, and severe neglect throughout his childhood, a growing group of psychologists and psychiatrists is studying complex trauma—which can refer to exposure...
Blog Post
"Historical Trauma in America" series starting July 15.
Hi everyone, it's Monday! So I know, not everyone is excited about Mondays. However, this is a very good Monday as there were no serious tropical systems that impacted the Caribbean over the weekend. (We could not say that last week after Hurricane Elsa battered several of our sister and brother islands.) Climate related events are but one of the challenges our Caribbean region faces. Another huge issue is inherited trauma from the centuries of genocide, conquest, enslavement, exploitation...
Blog Post
How Have Children and Families Fared During Covid?
Hi everyone, It's Friday or as some say, Fri-yay! Today we want to share some additional research info with you and it is based on US data for the past year. Essentially, the desire was to understand how children and families have been coping since the onset of Covid-19. Recently, KidsData released the latest data from the "Family Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic" questionnaire. These data are the second wave of findings from the multi-wave questionnaire. As the COVID-19 pandemic...
Blog Post
"Machete" Star Talks About His Childhood Experiences
Hello everyone. If you are into corny action-comedy movies, then you know the person whose picture adorns the cover image for this post. None other than Mexican-American actor, Danny Trejo, the star of the "Machete" series. Back in the day, I had read that Trejo was a former gang-banger, former drug addict and was formerly incarcerated. However, I never heard his story until recently. He has written a book detailing some of his highlighted experiences but shares how, after giving the...
Blog Post
PACEs Champion Dwana Young navigates community-driven ACEs healing centers in New Jersey
In 2020, New Jersey, a state with about 9 million people spread over the rural countryside and dense urban areas like Newark, launched a new entity: the NJ Office of Resilience (NJOR). The NJOR is unusual because it is a public-private partnership. It brings together three private foundations as well as the NJ Department of Children and Families to provide community-driven strategies for preventing, treating, and healing from ACEs. Like a ship’s navigator laying out a course on charts, Dwana...
Blog Post
A Trauma Informed Approach to Vaccine Fear
PLEASE SIGN ON TO THIS MEMO TO SUPPORT OUTREACH ALONG THESE LINES TO THE ADMINISTRATION! If the goal is to impact meaningful change, it might prove helpful to view vaccine fear through a trauma informed-lens. There is an intentional shift from the use of the word “hesitancy” and instead using the more specific and appropriate term “fear”. We are more likely to change that which we better define and understand. The following memo has been developed with input from an interdisciplinary team of...
Blog Post
Gentle Men: The Healing Power of Vulnerability (mindful.org)
Growing up, I was taught that traditional male attributes are things like toughness, emotional reserve, strength, power, and staunch individualism. This image of a “traditional man” feeds into once-clear-cut roles like winner and provider . Edward M. Adams and Ed Frauenheim suggest that this version of masculinity is confined : both limited and limiting. In their 2020 book, Reinventing Masculinity , Adams and Frauenheim write, “Confined masculinity focuses more on a man’s sense of...
Blog Post
The Launch of Heal Trauma Global: Culturally Attuned Trauma Training
Being Trauma-Informed means that we are Culturally Attuned. Heal Trauma Global is a sister company to Heal Historical Trauma and was cultivated to fill a wide gap in stress science & trauma training. The trauma-informed movement is beautiful! It's wonderful that as a society we are moving in a direction that honors an individual's past as part of the driving force behind current behaviors. Yet, time and time again, I have attended trainings that are labeled as Trauma-Informed only to...
Blog Post
Black History Month 2K22- NEW Trainings!
In Honor of Black History Month 2k22 Please Enjoy the Following NEW Trainings: Facilitating a Full Expression of Resilience: BIPOC are resilient. In learning how trauma is formed and passed from one generation to the next in our communities, we will understand how to facilitate a full expression of resilience in vulnerable communities. This course takes a deep dive into the reality of flight or fight mode and how many people enduring oppression, discrimination and hate live with a constant...
Blog Post
Free Trauma Research Foundation Zoom Sessions
Hi everyone, we hope you're all doing well and remaining healthy. As we begin the second month of 2022, we want to share with you a link to a series of online sessions on trauma that you can attend via Zoom. The sessions are being offered by the Trauma Research Foundation and aim to equip caregivers to understand what their children are experiencing, and to provide some support to their children. (Don't quote us but TRF appears to be connected with Bessel van der Kolk as the session is...
Blog Post
Building the Movement workshop series
If you haven't already been joining our Building the Movement workshop series, I wanted to personally invite you to join the next free, virtual workshop that aims to provide stakeholders, advocates and practitioners the tools to integrate trauma-informed, resilience-focused and healing-centered approaches and principles into their daily operations. Please join us on Friday, March 4, 2022, from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. PT) as we focus on populations with high prevalence of...
Blog Post
Research shows only a tiny percentage of physicians integrating PACEs science
Three relatively recent studies from different parts of the U.S. show that only a tiny percentage of physicians, medical school faculty and other healthcare providers are integrating practices and policies based on the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs). Why it matters: For people in the PACEs community, the following is news that’s 20 years old: Adverse childhood experiences are common, preventable and linked to six out of the top ten leading causes of death in...
Blog Post
Healing Your Brain After Loss: How Grief Rewires the Brain
Hi everyone, we hope you are having a relaxing Saturday. The extent to which ordinary persons have suffered and are suffering loss and grief is staggering, particularly after 2 years of addressing COVID 19. For that reason, we think it is helpful to provide you with resources to help you and equip you to help.oters who may be dealing with tragic loss and grief. In the recent (2021) American Brain Foundation webinar “Healing Your Brain After Loss: A Neurologist’s Perspective,” Lisa M.
Blog Post
PACEs Research Corner — April 2022
[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 Vermeulen S, Alink LRA, van Berkel SR. Child Maltreatment During School and Childcare Closure Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Child Maltreat. 2022 Feb...
Blog Post
AAP Snapshot: In the Words of Parents [positiveexperience.org/category/blog/]
By The HOPE Team, 2/9/22, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ The American Academy of Pediatrics released two new snapshots in the Family Snapshots: Life during the Pandemic series. These reports share what parents found the most helpful or most challenging in raising their children throughout lockdown and as the pandemic progressed. In the Words of Parents Part 1: Work and Family Finances and In the Words of Parents Part 2: Remote Education and Home life . [ Click here to read more. ]
Blog Post
SIGNS YOU’RE A COMPASSION FATIGUED LEADER — AND 10 TIPS FOR RECOVERY
By Shakima L. Tozay, (first published @ Govloop.com) Are you emotionally and physically exhausted? Do you no longer feel a sense of personal accomplishment in your work? Have you become more disconnected from your co-worker? Over the last 2 years, the emotional impacts of the pandemic and the exodus of workers in what has been called the Great Reshuffle, has taken a major toll on many leaders. Last year, nearly 48 million U.S. workers left their jobs. Additionally, the “hidden...
Blog Post
Dave Ellis put NJ on solid footing to advance PACEs science practices, policies
Two years ago, instead of retiring as planned, Dave Ellis decided to apply for the new position of “executive on loan” to create and lead the New Jersey Office of Resilience (OoR) in the Department of Children and Families (DCF). It is the first state-level office to integrate policies and practices based on the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences. His appointment electrified the national PACEs movement, not only because he was a pioneer in the movement, but because the...
Blog Post
48-Hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program
Iya Affo & Heal Historical Trauma Presents New!! 48-HOUR HISTORICAL TRAUMA SPECIALIST CERTIFICATION in collaboration with THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORICAL TRAUMA ASSOCIATION We are the only entity offering a comprehensive, 48-hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program. The Program is broken into 6 levels and is built on a foundation of BIPOC cultures and neurobiology. It is taught from a multicultural perspective, injecting traditions and ideology from various cultures from...
Blog Post
AAP Article - Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adolescent Police Contact in the UK
Happy Friday everyone! We trust the week has been good to you all. As we approach the weekend, there is some research we would like to share with you. It is published by Dylan B. Jackson, PhD et al in the publication of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are prevalent in the population and yield several adverse consequences for child health and development as they accumulate. The objective of the current study is to examine the association between ACEs...
Blog Post
How to Help Survivors of Extreme Climate Events (psychologytoday.com)
By Elaine Miller-Karas MSW, LCSW Building Resiliency to Trauma Psychology Today, September 30, 2022 Mental health can suffer after extreme climate events. KEY POINTS Mental health conditions exacerbated by natural disasters include post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. After a disaster, the number of people needing assistance from the mental health systems strains or exceeds community capacity. There are simple strategies helpers can use to help survivors restore...
Blog Post
48-Hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program- COHORT 1 & 2
NOT TOO LATE FOR COHORT 1!! Also registering for COHORT 2!! New!! 48-HOUR HISTORICAL TRAUMA SPECIALIST CERTIFICATION in collaboration with THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORICAL TRAUMA ASSOCIATION We are the only entity offering a comprehensive, 48-hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program. The Program is broken into 6 levels and is built on a foundation of BIPOC cultures and neurobiology. It is taught from a multicultural perspective, injecting traditions and ideology from various...
Blog Post
48-Hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program- COHORT 2
New!! 48-HOUR HISTORICAL TRAUMA SPECIALIST CERTIFICATION in collaboration with THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORICAL TRAUMA ASSOCIATION We are the only entity offering a comprehensive, 48-hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program. The Program is broken into 6 levels and is built on a foundation of BIPOC cultures and neurobiology. It is taught from a multicultural perspective, injecting traditions and ideology from various cultures from around the world. In this inclusive study we rely...
Blog Post
Leaders & Experts in Education: We Need You!
We are seeking a few additional leaders and experts in education to join as panelists for a special closed meeting roundtable discussion taking place on 4/9 @ 11:00 am - 2:30 pm (ET). Topics will include equitable access to quality education for children of African descent, the viability of a whole-person education for children of African descent, providing school children of African descent tools for healing and resilience, and ensuring that the education of children of African descent...