Blog

The Networks of Opportunity for Child Wellbeing (NOW) is excited to share the fifth episode of In the Arena with NOW , a podcast series that lifts up the voices of community leaders who are “in the arena” -- in classrooms, playgrounds, Congressional halls, hospitals, and neighborhood streets -- working to make sure that all children and families can live healthy, thriving lives. In our fifth episode, Honoring Culture, Language, and Family: Stories from the Navajo Nation , we speak with...

By Cheryl L. Currie, Jennifer L. Copeland, M. Lauren Voss, et al., BMC Public Health, October 29, 2019 Abstract Background Tobacco use, alcohol use, and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption are each associated with increased cancer-risk. Psychological trauma is a common experience and a key driver of these behaviours among adults. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of trauma-informed yoga, drumming, and psychoeducation compared to control on tobacco use, alcohol use, and...

Dr. Mimi Graham is Florida’s Johnny Appleseed, but instead of planting apple trees, she’s been seeding hundreds of ACEs-science-informed schools, courts, juvenile detention centers, hospitals, childcare centers, home visiting programs, mental health agencies, law enforcement agencies, and drug treatment centers. Graham, who has served as director of the Florida State University Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy in Tallahassee since 1993, focuses on early childhood,...

What is the purpose of having school without power? I work in a small school in a big state. The local school community had the power shut over the weekend as a preventive action for avoiding fires. This morning I was told that there would be school without power and to plan to provide services and teach children without power. My instinct was - this is not safe!

I couldn't be prouder of my home church, Headwaters Covenant Church in Helena, MT. Throughout the fall, we have been purposefully and carefully addressing subjects that the church often avoids. Among these topics are the family dysfunction that results from generational trauma, the prevalence of adversity in childhood within families in Montana, training in suicide awareness and prevention, and moral injury (especially among our veterans and service men and women). Just this last Sunday we...

By Christina Plerhoples, Stacy Schilling, and Joseph Schilling, Housing Matters, October 23, 2019 Recently, Vice published a story about Tamara Adrine-Davis, a resident of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who is facing jail time because of housing code violations. Adrine-Davis, who is 57 and uses a wheelchair, hasn’t been able to raise the $8,000 needed for home repairs, such as fixing a step on her front porch. The story raises questions about housing code enforcement, which we studied in Memphis,...

By Ibram X. Kendi, The Atlantic, October 24, 2019 I had a 30-minute ride to the train station. I nestled into my seat, opened my phone, and saw that Representative Elijah Cummings had passed away. I gasped and covered my mouth. The driver peeked at me in his rear-view mirror. He saw me shaking my head and whispering what many Americans whispered last Thursday: He was only 68. My mind turned to my father, whom I had just left at a hotel in Princeton, New Jersey. Dread burned in my chest. To...

By Pien Huang, National Public Radio, October 22, 2019 Better vaccines, nutrition and disease control have cut the global death rate for children in half over the past 20 years. But even within countries that have made major progress, children can face greatly different fates. "Where you're born substantially impacts your probability of surviving to 5," says Simon Hay, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington who is the lead author of a new study on childhood mortality in Nature.

By Ziad Obermeyer, Brian Powers, Christine Vogeli, and Sendhil Mullainathan, Science, October 25, 2019 Racial bias in health algorithms The U.S. health care system uses commercial algorithms to guide health decisions. Obermeyer et al. find evidence of racial bias in one widely used algorithm, such that Black patients assigned the same level of risk by the algorithm are sicker than White patients (see the Perspective by Benjamin). The authors estimated that this racial bias reduces the number...

The full moon was setting and the sun was rising as organizers from KIDS Network, Children & Family Resource Services, Casa Pacifica, and the Department of Behavioral Wellness began setting up the 2019 BRIDGES TO RESILIENCE Conference on October 14 th at the beautiful Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. The stately halls and ballrooms were a flurry of activity as staff prepared to receive over 350 community members who work with children, youth and families in Santa Barbara County.

By Alexandra Chen, Catherine Panter-Brick, et al., Society for Research in Child Development, October 24, 2019 Abstract The impacts of war and displacement on executive function (EF)—what we might call the cognitive signatures of minds under siege—are little known. We surveyed a gender‐balanced sample of 12‐ to 18‐year‐old Syrian refugees (n = 240) and Jordanian non‐refugees (n = 210) living in Jordan. We examined the relative contributions of poverty, trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress,...