Tagged With "Mental Health America"
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Video: What is Trauma-Informed Care?
How do our experiences as children shape our health as adults? What does it mean to be trauma-informed, and what does trauma-informed care look like in a health care setting? In this animated video, meet “Dr. Cruz,” who addresses these questions and shares what she has learned about caring for patients with exposure to trauma, including abuse, neglect, and violence. View the video to learn about the lifelong impact of trauma on health, and how trauma-informed care can create a more welcoming...
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Addressing Trauma in Health Care, Schools, and the Community: Greater Newark Healthcare Coalition
As in many post-industrial cities, Newark has experienced dramatic challenges since the second half of the 20th century. A confluence of factors has resulted in the current landscape in which one third of the city lives in poverty, 72 percent of children are born into single female-headed households, and high rates of community and interpersonal violence burden residents. In 2008, Newark faced a health crisis created by the abrupt closures of two of its five hospitals. In response, the New...
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A Welcome Message from the Commissioner of New Jersey's Department of Children and Families
Dear NJ Resiliency Coalition Community Members, One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou. She said “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” This statement gives permission and grace for us to change our thinking, change policies, and change the world we live in. During my earlier work as an Assistant Commissioner with the Department of Children and Families (NJ DCF), and then in my work at Casey Family Programs, research about adverse childhood...
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Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences through a Coordinated Statewide Response in New Jersey
July 31, 2019, By Sana Hashim, MPH, CPH, CHES, Center for Health Care Strategies. States nationwide increasingly recognize the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on their communities, families, businesses, and workplaces. ACEs include all types of abuse, neglect, and other potentially traumatic experiences for children and youth under the age of 18. These exposures are linked to greater potential for risky health behaviors, chronic health conditions, and early death. With this...
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New Jersey Appoints National ACEs Expert to Head Office of Resilience
June 9, 2020, Trenton, NJ – The New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF) today announced that Dave Ellis has been named as Executive on Loan to the State of New Jersey, functioning as the first Executive Director for the Office of Resilience within DCF. Ellis will share his expertise with the state and coordinate statewide efforts to prevent, protect against, and heal from the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). ACEs are stressful or traumatic events, including...
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ACE Impact Team Aligns Efforts to Help Newark Residents Reach Greatest Potential
The ACE Impact Team, with strategies modeled by the Philadelphia ACE Task Force, Camden’s Hopeworks, and the Safe and Supportive Schools Commission in Massachusetts, is exploring ways to connect with youth. Specifically, community coaches are engaging with youth to better understand population health, develop leadership skills, and spearhead strategies to make their communities healthier. Read more here.
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Mental Illness and Substance Use in Young Adults
It's National Mental Illness Awareness Week. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) compiled materials to navigate conversations about mental health and substance use with adolescents. These include an infographic of the signs of mental illness and substance misuse in adolescents, as well as a guide to begin a conversation and motivate an adolescent to get the help they may need. Read more here.
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National Depression Screening Day
A June study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that young adults, minorities, and essential workers feel higher levels of anxiety, depression, are increasingly abusing drugs and alcohol, and have suicidal thoughts. For National Depression Screening Day, Mental Health America compiled information on the critical need for depression screenings--during and beyond COVID-19. Read more here.
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AG Grewal and Education Commissioner Dehmer Announce Statewide “Handle With Care” Program
TRENTON – Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and Interim Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer today announced a new Statewide “Handle With Care” Program to support schoolchildren in New Jersey who have experienced traumatic events. “Handle With Care” (HWC) is designed to promote partnerships between law enforcement and schools to provide a safe and supportive academic environment for children exposed to "adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs. ACEs, if unaddressed, can lead to problems such...
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Indigenous Peoples' Day
Mental health issues affect everyone, but Native American people have higher rates of mental health disorders and face more disparities in getting help than White people. This is due to lack of access to health services resulting from institutional discrimination, interpersonal racism, and cultural stigma — which can harm the psyche of people of color in places where they are not the majority. Native Americans have higher rates of substance abuse and depression (PDF) in comparison to other...
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Human Services & Children and Families Unveil $25 Million Plan to Support Continued Access to Critical Home and Community-Based Services During the Pandemic
New Jersey is using federal Coronavirus Relief Fund resources to provide up to $25 million to help providers of home health, developmental disability, child welfare, and homeless services remain open and accessible during the pandemic. Human Services and the Department of Children and Families will be reimbursing for the added costs they are incurring due to COVID-19 for essentials such as PPE and enhanced cleaning. Qualifying COVID-related expenditures include: Personal protective...
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Share Your COVID-19 Experience
Share Your COVID-19 Experience Community Conversations, New Jersey’s COVID-19 Storytelling Project, is a collaboration between the NJ YMCA State Alliance and NJ Department of Health to gather NJ residents’ accounts of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic: how we’ve struggled, survived, and how New Jersey should – can – improve. By listening to these accounts, we can better support our State’s healing process and form the building blocks of a more resilient, compassionate, and Healthy New Jersey.
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Weekly Highlights
Murphy signs bill to release thousands of N.J. prisoners early beginning the day after Election Day On October 19th, Governor Murphy signed legislation to free those trapped inside New Jersey jails, prisons, and halfway houses, where they face the worst COVID-19 outbreak of any prison system in the country. We anticipate that over 2,000 men and women within 8 months of their release date will gain relief from Public Health Emergency Credits, and will be released in the first week of...
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Weekly Highlights
Neighborhood conditions associated with children’s cognitive function November 4, 2020 U.S. National Institutes of Health A study published today in JAMA Network Open shows that children from poorer neighborhoods perform less well on a range of cognitive functions, such as verbal ability, reading skills, memory, and attention, and have smaller brain volumes in key cognitive regions compared to those from wealthier neighborhoods. While multiple studies have shown that household socioeconomic...
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A Statewide Vision to Address the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Conversation with New Jersey’s Office of Resilience Leadership
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — such as abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, family dysfunction, and racism — can negatively impact a child’s developing brain and body, as well as long-term health and social outcomes. In New Jersey, over 40 percent of children are estimated to have experienced at least one ACE, with 18 percent experiencing multiple ACEs. Given the prevalence of ACEs and their potential life-long consequences, New Jersey is coordinating a statewide strategy to...
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Weekly Highlights
Native American Heritage Month When COVID-19 hit the Navajo Nation, it limited students’ educational opportunities after schools closed, eliminated essential school services, exposed ongoing inequities, and made health and economic hardships families face worse. Navajo health officials said COVID-19 started spreading across the nation after a tribal member attended a basketball tournament in early March then went to a church revival the next day in Chilchinbeto, a small community south of...
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Weekly Highlights
Helping Children Heal: Resilience; The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope December 4, 2020 December 7, 2020 https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/4504282835155688464 Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and DCF Commissioner Christine Norbut Beyer invite you to watch this documentary and engage in an interactive conversation about how New Jersey can address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in our children. Watch: December 4, 2020 , You will receive a link to watch the documentary...
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Rutgers Institute for Health Receives $10M to Study Health and Well-Being in New Jersey
https://www.newswise.com/articles/rutgers-institute-for-health-receives-10m-to-study-health-and-well-being-in-new-jersey
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NJ medical school program requires all first-year students to learn about ACEs science
In 2015, Dr. Beth Pletcher, a pediatrician and associate professor specializing in genetics, was at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Washington D.C. when she heard two speakers that forever changed her work with medical students. Dr. Beth Pletcher “I went to two talks on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that were so mind-boggling to me that I decided on my drive back to New Jersey that I had to do something about it,”says Pletcher, director of the Division...
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Weekly Highlights
In the News: Debate Starts Over COVID-19 Vaccine for Children in New Jersey Schools have been the front line in universal childhood vaccination in the United States since nearly the beginning of childhood vaccines, from the debates in the late 1800s and early 1900s over whether all Massachusetts students get a smallpox vaccine to more widespread mandates for measles and other shots in the 1970s. And in recent years, of course, they have also proven the new battleground in the heated debates...
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Healing-Centered Schools
By Amanda Adams Imagine pulling into a school parking lot and seeing a garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetables, a spacious playground and well-paved walkways to several building entrances. As you get out of your car and approach the building there is clear signage, in multiple languages, to help you find the main entrance with welcoming and uplifting messages for students and their parents. When you walk in the building there is soft music playing over the intercom and someone is near...
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The Brain Architects: Connecting Health & Learning Part I: The Science
How do our biological systems work together to respond to chronic stress? What do these responses mean for early learning and lifelong health? And when we say that early experiences matter, what do we mean by early? This episode of The Brain Architects podcast addresses all these questions and more! To kick off this episode, Center Director Dr. Jack Shonkoff describes the body’s stress response system, how our biological systems act as a team when responding to chronic stress, and the...
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Nicholson Foundation Funding Efforts to Address ACEs and Build Resilience in New Jersey on Multiple Fronts
Since 2018, The Nicholson Foundation has been working hard to make New Jersey a leader among states in how it addresses, treats, and prevents Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)—traumatic events that can cause children lifelong physical, mental, and social damage. Over the past two years, The Nicholson Foundation has invested $3.5 million in efforts that directly prevent ACEs or build resilience to their effects and complementary programs and services that support healthy child development...
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Nashville’s Purposeful Twist on ACEs: All Children Excel
In 2015, the pieces that became ACE Nashville began to fall into place. A five-year Community Health Improvement Plan included the support of mental and emotional health as one of its three goals. A core team of individuals from the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee and the Family Center, a non-profit focused on breaking generational cycles of child trauma, began to meet weekly. And a citywide “consensus workshop” in April of that year—drawing 44...
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COVID Relief law creates a $82 billion Education Stabilization Fund for local schools and higher education institutions
While the 5,000-page $900 billion COVID Relief Bill ( H.R. 133, Div. M and N) fell short on some fronts (e.g., did not provide direct fiscal relief to cash-strapped states and localities), it does provide $82 billion in Education Stabilization Funds for states, school districts, and higher education institutions—crucial support for education as students return to school after the holiday. Funding of this magnitude makes a trauma-informed COVID response possible, giving advocates the...
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*NEW PUBLICATION* Chronic Disease Among African American Families: A Systematic Scoping Review
Chronic diseases are common among African Americans, but the extent to which research has focused on addressing chronic diseases across multiple members of African American families is unclear. This systematic scoping review summarizes the characteristics of research addressing coexisting chronic conditions among African American families, including guiding theories, conditions studied, types of relationships, study outcomes, and intervention research.
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Self-Healing Communities Model, Co-Hosted with CTIPP, Second in a series
Self-Healing Communities Model, co hosted with CTIPP Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, 3-4:00 ET (Noon-1:00 PT) Second in a series on state-to-state best practices featuring the self-healing community model Self-Healing Community Model , Washington, developed networks that promoted collaboration across sectors and empowered local leaders to think about whole systems. The use of data helped prioritize efforts and learn what was working. Beyond Washington State, numerous other states are using the...
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The Turrell Fund is proud to present the first Turrell Town Hall featuring Dave Ellis, Office of Resilience, NJDCF discussing ACEs.
Welcome! Thank you for your interest in the first-ever Turrell Town Hall, a virtual discussion series for Turrell grantees, partners, and networks. Hosted and moderated by Evan Delgado, Vice President of Programs at the Turrell Fund, this Town Hall will feature Dave Ellis, Executive Director of the Office of Resilience at the New Jersey Department of Children & Families to discuss statewide developments around Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the key role of Turrell affiliates...
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17 Inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes (biography.com)
Here are 17 inspiring quotes from MLK's famous speeches and writings about education, justice, hope, perseverance and freedom: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." — Strength to Love, 1963 "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all...
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"How to talk policy and influence people": a Law and Justice interview with Dr Wendy Ellis
In this special interview in the "How to talk policy and influence people" series of Law and Justice, I speak with Dr Wendy Ellis, Director of the Center for Community Resilience at The Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University. We discuss journalism, data gathering, analysis and stories. We talk about the significance of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) evidence, resilience/protective factors, structural inequity, adverse community environments, the...
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National Day of Racial Healing hosted by W.K. Kellogg Foundation - Streaming TODAY 1/19/2021 @ 3PM EST.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is hosting an event on their National Day of Racial Healing which is January 19, 2021. We highly encourage you to attend the events hosted by the foundation, find events near you, and explore creative ways to bring racial healing to your community. To learn more about #howweheal, please visit their website here . THE NATIONAL PREMIERE IS 01.19.21 Mark your calendar and join us for essential and timely conversations on racial healing, equity and justice. As we...
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Healing-Centered Engagement Event
Healing-Centered Engagement Learn more about a new pilot program to help NJ schools address adversity and trauma NJPSA/FEA invites all public school superintendents, school and teacher leaders, and family/community organizations to attend an Information Session on February 4 to learn about an exciting and innovative initiative. In partnership with over 100 education and community leaders across the state, the NJPSA/FEA-led team has researched and designed a school framework to address adult...
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Child Mind Institute Summit: Telehealth and the Coronavirus
Child Mind Institute Summit: Telehealth and the Coronavirus About this Event The Child Mind Institute Summit on Telehealth and the Coronavirus follows the publication of our 2020 Children’s Mental Health Report. This thought-provoking discussion featuring Child Mind Institute President Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz and California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris will explore the mental health impacts of the pandemic on youth and families, and how innovative treatment solutions can improve...
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NJ ACES ACTION PLAN SOCIAL MEDIA KIT
We’re asking for your help to spread awareness about the ACEs Action Plan. Below are links to graphics and a video for download, suggested post copy for social media and flyers that can be shared digitally or printed out for display. Please join us in sharing these materials across your social media accounts, via email, websites, newsletters or blog posts. Graphics can be downloaded here: https://www.nj.gov/dcf/news/publications/aces.html Remember to use #ResilientNJ and/or #ACEsAction...
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PreventingACES.pdf
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Black history explains why COVID-19 has ravaged that community | Opinion
By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist By Hamid Shaaban Black History Month is often observed by commemorating Black excellence and honoring the remarkable achievements and contributions of Black people in the United States and around the world. This month, I propose to all my colleagues in healthcare and medicine to promote and advance education about the history of medical racism. That history is Black history and it is often neglected and remains largely unacknowledged. It’s important to...
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How are law enforcement leaders using ACEs science to change policing?
Eleven years ago, Pennsylvania Executive Deputy Attorney General Robert Reed learned about the landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences Study , which linked childhood trauma to a higher risk of aggression, substance abuse, suicide and many life-threatening mental and physical diseases later in life. For him, it was a revelation. “The [ACE Study] gave me the language to understand what I felt, but didn’t have the language to express,” Reed said. “I had been in law enforcement for 30 years and...
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ACEs Action Plan to make New Jersey a “trauma-informed/healing centered state” launched on February 4 by Governor Phil Murphy and other key officials
Growing up with trauma inextricably linked to racism in southern Illinois, working as a state employee in Minnesota, training folks about ACEs and diversity and equity in several states—these are just a few of the life experiences Dave Ellis brings to the work he is now doing as Executive Director of the New Jersey Office of Resilience. Seven months ago Ellis took the job to head the Office of Resilience with the assurance that there would be a deep and meaningful focus on community...
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ACEs Videos in Spanish
While resources in English on ACEs, toxic stress, resilience, trauma-informed care, and related topics have proliferated in recent years, there is still a dearth of resources in other languages. Below, please find some videos in Spanish (or at least subtitled in Spanish) that explain various aspects of ACEs science. If you know of others, please share them in the comments, and we’ll add them to the list! VIDEOS IN SPANISH Estrés Tóxico y Resiliencia ( Stress and Resilience: How Toxic Stress...
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New Jersey's Own Whitney Houston
Today marks nine years since we lost an icon, the indelible mark Whitney Houston left on this world continues on today! With over 200 million combined album, singles and videos sold worldwide during her career with Arista Records, Whitney Houston has established a benchmark for superstardom that will quite simply never be eclipsed in the modern era. She is a singer’s singer who has influenced countless other vocalists female and male. Music historians cite Whitney’s record-setting...