Skip to main content

PACEs in Medical Schools

Blog

Psychological Trauma Is the Next Crisis for Coronavirus Health Workers [Scientific American]

After his roughest days in a New York City emergency room, physician Matthew Bai feels his whole body relax when he sees his wife and 17-month-old daughter. “My light at the end of the tunnel is going home to family,” Bai says. When Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital started to overflow with COVID-19 patients in late March, however, Bai and his wife decided she should take their toddler and stay with her parents in New Jersey. The risk of spreading the virus to his family was too great. Now...

NIHB Launches Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) Hub

The National Indian Health Board, in collaboration with CDC, has launched a new resource hub! Many Tribal individuals, families, and communities have been impacted by childhood experiences causing physical and mental health adversities throughout the lifespan. However, with understanding and effort, individuals and communities can confront Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) for positive health outcomes. This information hub, launched by the National Indian Health Board includes a "resource...

Public Health considers itself as a social science. It can be a resource for ACEs activists.

I have just attended two Virtual meetings about public health. Public health agencies have been under funded for years. The covid19 crisis has impacted those institutions heavily. However many Public Health agencies are ACEs aware. They can be useful allies for ACEs activities. What follows is from the Fighting For Our Lives forums follow up communication. The recordings from the forum series are available at the following links. There is a brief registration form before you can view the...

Does racism make us sick? Amid a national reckoning, the question gains new importance [sfchronicle.com]

By Tatiana Sanchez, San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2020 Elaine Shelly has lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years. But she said she still panics whenever she has to see a new neurologist because of racial discrimination she’s experienced in the past. Even getting a proper diagnosis for her illness was a battle. “I’d go to these neurologists who would tell me that Black people don’t get M.S. and that I must be mentally ill,” said Shelly, 63, of San Leandro. A former print journalist,...

Does VP Candidate Kamala Harris know about ACEs?  You bet!

Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General, has a lot in common with the vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris—Jamaican heritage, surname, home state—and a commitment to addressing ACEs and toxic stress. As reported in the New Yorker article by Paul Tough, “The Poverty Clinic,” Dr. Harris told Kamala Harris, then San Francisco district attorney, about ACEs in 2008 and in response, she offered to help. District Attorney Harris then introduced her to professor of child and...

What’s behind burnout in trainee physicians (Contemporary Pediatrics)

By Miranda Hester, August 21, 2020, Contemporary Pediatrics. Burnout is often seen as something that happens to physicians who have been practicing for years. A new study looks at how burnout impacts trainee physicians. The topic of burnout and how to prevent or ameliorate it has been discussed for many years. That discussion may reach a fever pitch as the COVID-19 pandemic rages and increases many stressors. A report in JAMA Network Open looks at what’s behind burnout in trainee physicians.

Community-level changes can impact health outcomes (Contemporary Pediatrics)

By Rachael Zimlich, August 21, 2020, Contemporary Pediatrics. Improving neighborhood conditions in disadvantaged areas can help improve health outcomes, but these improvements may be modest and take a long time to see. Still, any improvement is a good improvement, concludes a new study. The report , 1 published in Pediatrics , reviews a collaboration by hospitals and community leadership in Ohio, where efforts were aimed at improving health outcomes by making communities better places to...

Trauma informed pain treatment

A patient-centered approach to opioid tapers must account for the reality that many people who are given a prescription for an opioid to treat pain have significant mental health conditions—for which opioids act as a psychotropic agent. An opioid taper must therefore address psychological trauma, in particular.

‘Death by structural poverty’: US south struggles against Covid-19 [theguardian.com]

Monica McCasklill, left, and her daughter Kena Johnson, at their home in Greenwood, Missisppi. They respectively lost their grandmother and great grandmother, Ethel Huntley, to Covid-19. Huntley lived in a nearby nursing home and the family allege failings in her primary care. Photograph: Rory Doyle/The Guardian. By Oliver Laughland, The Guardian, August 5, 2020 Poor access to healthcare, failed political leadership and the endurance of segregation and racism have contributed to a surge in...

Baby courts: A proven approach to stop the multigenerational transmission of ACES in child welfare; new efforts to establish courts nationwide

The organization Zero To Three estimates that in the U.S., a child is taken into the child welfare system every six seconds. “Many of society’s most intractable problems can be traced back to childhood adversity. Being in the child welfare system increases the likelihood of more adversity and criminality. Baby court is a proven approach to healing the trauma of both child and parent, and breaking the cycle of maltreatment,” says Mimi Graham, Ed.D ., director of the Florida State University...

Structural Racism, Social Risk Factors, and Covid-19 — A Dangerous Convergence for Black Americans (NEJM)

Perspective by Leonard E. Egede, M.D., and Rebekah J. Walker, Ph.D. July 22, 2020, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2023616 . *Author Affiliations: From the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, and the Center for Advancing Population Science, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Current protests throughout the United States are highlighting the history of marginalization of and discrimination against Black Americans, including 250 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow laws,...

Donald Trump is the product of abuse and neglect. His story is common, even for the powerful and wealthy.

“In order to cope,” writes Mary Trump, “Donald began to develop powerful but primitive defenses, marked by an increasing hostility to others and a seeming indifference to his mother’s absence and father’s neglect….In place of [his emotional needs] grew a kind of grievance and behaviors—including bullying, disrespect, and aggressiveness—that served their purpose in the moment but became more problematic over time. With appropriate care and attention, they might have been overcome.”

GUEST EDITORIAL: We need a new model for mental health [heraldtribune.com]

By Andrea Blanch, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, July 27, 2020 People are really stressed out right now. A recent national survey reports that “serious psychological distress” — the kind that can lead to longer-term psychiatric disorders — has more than tripled since this time last year. We are already seeing the consequences in Sarasota County, with the number of opioid-related deaths in the first half of 2020 more than double the number in all of 2019. And based on experience with SARS, experts...

Navigating Trauma in Your Personal Statement for Medical School (In-Training)

By Britt D. K. Gratreak, July 21, 2020, University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson I applied to medical school twice. In retrospect, I was unsuccessful the first time for a few reasons: my timing was terrible, I had too much humility about my achievements, and I didn’t ask for enough opinions about my application from people who were rooting for me. My trauma was also too raw and recent to write in a way for strangers to understand. After taking a few years to focus on research, I...

Copyright © 2023, PACEsConnection. All rights reserved.
×
×
×
×