Blog

Tennessee First Lady Crissy Haslam this week released a report highlighting eight years of progress by the state to improve the lives of children and families. Prioritizing Tennessee’s Children: Our Promise to Future Generations reflects an early commitment by Governor Bill Haslam’s administration to make the health and success of all Tennessee children a state priority. In conjunction with Governor Haslam’s Children’s Cabinet and Deputy Governor Jim Henry, First Lady Haslam set out to...

When most people think of foundations, they think of deep pockets. That’s understandable, since the popular public perception of philanthropy has been shaped by the creation of multimillion-dollar foundations by titans of old, and enforced by the glamour of new foundations launched to much fanfare by today’s billionaires. In rural communities, the creation of big-dollar health conversion foundations garners media attention and sparks public awareness. But as with their mammoth cousins, these...

Johnson City to co-host forum on community-wide systems of care On Sept. 5, the City of Johnson City will co-host a forum entitled Moving from Understanding to Implementing Trauma-Responsive Services in conjunction with the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA). The forum will address SAMHSA recommendations for communities to treat trauma as a component of effective behavioral health service delivery. Statistics recently released from the Tennessee Department of...

In just six weeks, stakeholders from across North Carolina will get together to learn about system integration work with youth involved with child welfare. This is the third annual Benchmarks' Partnering for Excellence (PFE) Conference and this year, we have decided to really focus on "Creating Nurturing Systems". While the daily work of PFE can be hard and challenges us to think of new ways to meet the needs of the family, the annual conference offers us a way to celebrate our successes and...

By the summer of 2005, the Reverend Richard Joyner of Conetoe Chapel Missionary Baptist Church realized he was conducting funerals twice a month—a startling number given his town’s tiny population. Nearly 300 souls call Conetoe (pronounced “ka-‘nee-ta”) home. The predominantly African American hamlet is situated in North Carolina’s Edgecombe County, where a quarter of households live below the poverty line and heart disease kills more 
20- to 39-year-olds than do car accidents. “I’ve closed...

On May 22, I had the opportunity to experience a presentation by DeAngelo Mack on the Sacramento Violence Intervention Program, Trauma and ACEs. The presentation was at Kaiser Sacramento and was directed to residents in the organization. I have worked with @DeAngelo Mack, @Chris Cooper and @Esmeralda Huerta through Resilient Sacramento for the past few years and have admired their work in the community, this was the first opportunity I had to attend...

Jane Stevens has worked for nearly 40 years as a journalist primarily covering science, health and technology. When she learned about Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, she saw unmet needs to disseminate the findings of ACEs science and to bring practitioners together. She created Acestoohigh.com and ACESconnection.com , a news site and social networking site which both serve as hubs for education about ACEs and resiliency as well as offering connection for communities striving to put...

Human services organizations and coalitions often talk about “making room at the table” for non-professionals, local residents and people with lived experience of poverty, addiction, mental illness or trauma. But those organization leaders rarely spend time at the community’s tables—that is, the block parties and cook-outs, playgrounds and parks, neighborhood association meetings, parent-teacher organizations, Little League games and other grass-roots venues that are essential grounds for...

On the 27th of April 2018, Rowan-Salisbury School System hosted a showing of the movie Resilience at the Norvell Theater in Salisbury, North Carolina. Upon entering the lobby of the Novell Theater, shortly after 6pm that evening, the amount of enthusiasm and partnership surrounding the showing of Resilience and the trauma work being done within the community was breathtaking. The lobby was filled with teachers and social workers and many key community stakeholders, all working together to...

Jennifer Donahue, Delaware Office of the Child Advocate, testifies before the HELP Committee (Jennifer Perry to her right) ____________________________________________________________ Some seasoned advocates say legislators are influenced by stories while their staffs are swayed by data. There was some of both at the April 11 hearing on the draft Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 of the U.S. Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee but it was the personal stories that...

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) plans to award up to 75 grants to rural communities as part of a new Rural Communities Opioid Response (Planning) (RCORP) initiative in FY 18. Successful awardees will receive up to $200,000 for one-year to develop plans to implement opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery interventions designed to reduce opioid overdoses among rural populations. The initiative will focus...

Dr. Suzanne Frank has known about the impact of childhood adversity on young lives for decades. She’s seen the fallout in the faces of young people huddled in beds at a children’s shelter where she worked years ago. She’s seen it as the regional child abuse services and champion for the Permanente Medical Group. And she’s seen it in hospital examination rooms where, as a member of the Santa Clara County’s Sexual Assault Response Team, she’s been called in to examine shell-shocked children...