Tagged With "san francisco"
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NPPC shares lessons learned and results from ACEs screening pilot sites
For Dr. Mercie Digangi, a pediatrician at Kaiser Southern California in Downey, CA, ACEs screening provided a crystal clear before-and-after in how she changed treatment plans for her pediatric patients, she explained to attendees of a December 2 webinar organized by the National Pediatric Practice Community on ACEs (NPPC) and cosponsored by ACEs Connection. Dr. Mercie Digangi One case that turned ACEs screening into a never-go-back moment for her was a three-year-old who was speech-delayed.
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Positive Childhood Experiences offset ACEs: Q & A with Dr. Robert Sege about HOPE
Tufts University medical professor Dr. Robert Sege directs the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine and is nationally known for his research on effective health systems approaches that address social determinants of health. He is also the principal investigator for the HOPE framework (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences).The HOPE framework is based on research that shows how positive childhood experiences can mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Sege and colleagues...
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Prescribing nature for health draws providers to Oakland, CA, conference
There’s now a growing body of research showing the positive health effects of nature. At a recent conference in Oakland, CA, clinicians who prescribe nature to help buffer ACEs and toxic stress experienced by children and families shared findings from their own research and others.
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Program offers hundreds of young men, boys safe space to heal from ACEs
Dennis McCollins recounts some of the experiences that caused him to harden against the world as a teenager. “There were times I went to more funerals than birthdays,” says McCollins, who is the clinical director of the School Based Health Center at Greenwood Academy in Richmond, Calif. And it took its toll: “I spent time homeless. I got expelled [from school]. I was so angry and upset and mad,” he says. Dennis McCollins Then a man that he met when he was sent to Job Corps as a teen turned...
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Report reveals how foster care, juvenile and adult justice systems traumatize youth, calls for policy shifts
YWFC sponsored Sister Warriors meeting When she was 15 years old, Lucero Herrera was put in a rehab program by San Francisco’s Juvenile Court because she was getting drunk regularly. And in doing so, the court failed to explore the root of her drinking. Had they done so, she said, they would have found that anger and trauma were lurking underneath, driven by her ACEs: adverse childhood experiences. Lucero Herrera "Why did they put me in a drug program when I had an anger problem? I went...
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Researchers Call for Quality-Improvement Changes in Medi-Cal Plans [chcf.org]
By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, October 7, 2019 California should move swiftly to improve the quality of care in the managed care plans that serve 80% of Medi-Cal’s nearly 14 million enrollees, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Led by Professor of Medicine Andrew Bindman, MD, with support from CHCF, the researchers examined 41 quality measures and found that more than half of the quality measures stayed the same or declined...
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RYSE Center's Listening Campaign: Young people in Richmond, CA help adults understand trauma, violence, coping, and healing
"My experience with violence is very brutal...I grew up with violence as if it were my sibling." - LC participant (youth) "We know we can't run the city- it's too complex- but our experience and our voices should count, especially because we're the most effected ." - LC participant (youth) "Our city's problems are shared by us all; we are all part of the problem AND the solution. Listening is a key component to healing." - LC Share Out partici pant (adult) Three years ago, RYSE Center in...
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Safe & Sound: Integrating protective factors and ACEs science to end child abuse in San Francisco in 50 years
It was almost a ritual, but one that regularly disrupted the parenting class at a San Francisco-based child abuse prevention organization. Every time a siren blared in the streets below, a female participant bolted out of the room to seek safety in the windowless interior rooms of the multilevel labyrinthine white Victorian that houses Safe & Sound . Molly Jardiniano And it didn’t just happen in the parenting class. “When she heard the fire trucks, she said she would become paralyzed,...
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San Bruno, CA, police reduce stress, burn-out with mindfulness
When Officer John Hampton of the San Bruno Police Department in San Bruno, CA, first heard that mindfulness training was being offered to him and his fellow cops, he had two reactions. John Hampton “I think my major reaction was: ‘Oh, there’s some hippy thing that they’re trying to get cops to do,’” he said. “When I say that, it’s funny because that’s not my voice. It’s the caricature of a police officer-like voice. In the back of my mind, I was interested and open to it, but that police...
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School by school, Berkeley Healthy Schools Collaborative is forging ahead on building resilience
What began as a presentation by ACEs Connection's Donielle Prince about ACEs science for members of the Berkeley Healthy Schools Collaborative morphed into a lively discussion about how the 11 members who attended the meeting were involved in shepherding trauma-informed practices into their organizations and schools. Prince, who is ACEs Connection’s San Francisco Bay Area community facilitator, talked about the evolution of ACEs Connection into a network of more than 22,000 members in...
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Solano County launches its ACEs and resilience initiative inviting all to take action
Elizabeth Huntley recalls the day when her family’s life was turned upside down. “One day my mom woke up and she packed up all of our clothes, all five of us…and she took me and my younger sister who had the same father… down to my paternal grandmother’s house…and she left us there. She took my middle sister to a town near Birmingham, Ala., and left her there. She took my only brother and an older sister back to Huntsville and left them at a sister’s house. Then she went back to that housing...
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Solano County's (CA) ACEs initiative, a robust community effort, makes room for input from all
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
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Sold-out Paper Tigers screening and panel in Berkeley, CA
Over 130 residents from across the San Francisco Bay Area representing education, health, and law enforcement attended the sold-out screening of Paper Tigers and panel on December 9 at the Brower Center in Berkeley, CA. The panel discussion was so involved it went 25 minutes longer than scheduled and spilled into the lobby where attendees talked until 10 pm! The documentary Paper Tigers follows six students during a school year at Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA. Lincoln is the...
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Toxic Stress, Behavioral Health, and the Next Major Era in Public Health by Mental Health America
To view the document, click on the following link: http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/issues/toxic-stress-behavioral-health-and-next-major-era-public-health
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Trauma-informed groups rev up to address race, inclusion
Eighteen-year-old Kia Hanson has always enjoyed her time as a youth leader at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC). She’s worked mostly with five- and six-year-olds since she began in 2016. Recently, she tapped into new skills, especially if the kids were having a meltdown. Kia Hanson “If they’re off, we ask them, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Do you want to talk about anything?’,” she explains. “Basically asking before assuming they’re mad at the world for no reason.” What made the...
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Trauma-Informed Organizational Assessment Tools
The San Francisco Bay Area Trauma-Transformed (T2) regional center put together this grid of Trauma-Informed Organizational Assessment Tools . ACEs Connection will add this resource to the Roadmap to Resilience Toolkit shortly. The grid includes the Trauma-Informed Agency Assessment (TIAA) Version 1.4 from the Maine Dept. of Health and Human Services, which was administered to hundreds of agencies across the SF Bay by T2 in fall 2015 via the participating 7 county behavioral health...
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Trauma Transformed launches regional effort in San Francisco Bay Area
Nearly 300 impassioned and committed people crowded into the Green Room at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center last week to launch Trauma Transformed. Known as T2, the regional effort – representing the San Francisco Department of Public Health and seven Bay Area counties – is funded by a four-year, $4-million grant from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Youth, families, health directors and public health leaders...
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ACEs Science Champions Series: Why this financial coach integrates ACEs-based training
In foreground, Dr. Donielle Prince (l) and Saundra Davis (r) ____________________________ Saundra Davis, a financial coach and consultant who trains other coaches on building resilience among the working poor, knew she had met her partner in helping people deal with their “money disorders” when she first met Dr. Donielle Prince in Sacramento at a black women’s gathering in 2015. Dr. Prince works with ACEs Connection as its San Francisco Bay Area regional community facilitator. She also...
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With support instead of punishment, a California school district works to improve special education [edsource.org]
As a result of California’s new school accountability system , West Contra Costa Unified, a San Francisco Bay Area school district that includes Richmond and several surrounding communities, is facing considerable pressure to increase the number of special education students who meet math and English language arts standards on tests and who go on to graduate. The district is among more than 150 districts — nearly 18 percent of all districts in California — slated to get help from county...
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Youth-led community organizing as a tool for building resilience
It started as an answer to a youth-led campaign. Young people in arts programs in San Francisco Bay Area schools had produced spoken word videos about inequities in their communities that helped put them at risk for type 2 diabetes. Dr. Jean Junior The response by their peers was enormous, according to Dr. Jean Junior, who volunteered for the project as a pediatric resident at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). “Young people would say ‘You’ve actually gotten me interested.
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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ACEs, biomarkers and the cost of adversity
How useful and necessary are biomarkers in telling the story of how toxic stress from adverse childhood experiences and resilience can impact a child’s long-term health? In the introduction to an article in the journal BioEssays , Dr. Kathryn Ridout, a Kaiser Permanente San Jose psychiatrist, and her co-authors examine what is known about two biomarkers and quote data on child maltreatment and its economic burden over time that says it all. “When totaling the costs of health care, child...
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ACEs Connection Network seeks qualified applicants for SF Bay Area Regional Facilitator position
ACEs Connection Network is looking for a qualified person to work with communities, organizations and individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area to prevent, address and heal the trauma of ACEs and build resilience. This position will focus on working with existing efforts, avoiding duplication and re-enforcing cooperative, coordinated efforts to channel the diversity and richness of ACEs science and trauma work in the Bay Area. For the job posting and application instructions, see ACEs...
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Advance Practice at the ACEs 2016 Project Showcase
From the organizers of the 2016 ACEs Conference , San Francisco, CA, October 19th -21st, 2016. Please consider submitting your project today! We know building connections and learning across fields is the best way to advance practices that support children. That’s why we’re very excited to invite you to submit your work to the 2016 Conference on Adverse Childhood Experiences Project Showcase . We’re looking to highlight research, programs, tools or other initiatives that: Highlight the role...
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At El Dorado ACEs Collaborative meeting, NPPC talks ACEs, new connections forged
More than 65 people showed up in person in Placerville or via teleconferencing from South Lake Tahoe on Feb. 21 to learn about the National Pediatric Practice Community on ACEs (NPPC), a program of the San Francisco-based Center for Youth Wellness . Among the discussion points made by NPPC Program Manager Leena Singh were the connection between ACEs and health outcomes, the need for doing universal ACEs screening, and the necessary infrastructure to implement ACEs screening, according to...
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Bay Area 'shelter in place' expected: Only essential businesses open in 6 counties with 6.7million people until April 7 [sfchronicle.com]
By Erin Allday, San Francisco Chronicle, March 16, 2020 Six Bay Area counties are expected to announce a “shelter in place” order for all residents on Monday, directing everyone to stay inside their homes and away from others as much as possible for the next three weeks as public health officials desperately try to curb the rapid spread of coronavirus across the region. County authorities were expected to announce the move at 1 p.m. and gave a draft of the order to media outlets to prepare.
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California issues update on state residents' ACE scores from 2011 & 2013 surveys
The latest adverse childhood experiences survey from the California Department of Public Health shows that 42% of the population has an ACE score of 3 or higher; 16% have an ACE score of 4 or higher. Those with an ACE score of 4 or higher are: 3x more likely to be current smokers 4x more likely to have a depressive disorder 2x more likely to have asthma 2x more likely to be obese 4x more likely to have COPD 3x more likely to have a stroke Here are a few other highlights from the six-page...
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California Schools Will Not Reopen This Year Due to Coronavirus, Superintendent Says [sfchronicle.com]
By Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2020 California schools will be unable to reopen this year given current safety concerns and ongoing social distancing, the state superintendent told county officials Tuesday. The letter, obtained by The Chronicle, was not a directive, but rather an acknowledgment that the still growing coronvirus crisis will mean schools must stay shuttered. While classrooms will remain closed, education will continue, Superintendent of Public Instruction...
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Contra Costa to study racial disparities in criminal justice system [contracostatimes.org]
MARTINEZ -- One year after Contra Costa County's two highest-ranking lawyers sparred over alleged racism in the criminal justice system, the county is beginning to look into why some minority groups are overrepresented in jails and underrepresented on juries. The proposed 15-member Racial Justice Task Force is slated to convene next year with membership coming from law enforcement, the courts, school districts and community groups. If funding is approved by county supervisors or secured...
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Dozens of stakeholders representing thousands of practitioners send public comments on Calif. ACEs-screening plan
Update: We posted this story on Tuesday evening and received a response from the Department of Health Care Services Wednesday that clarifies additional information. DHCS information Officer Katharine Weir said that subject to budget approval by the legislature and the governor: The reimbursement rate will be $29. Federally Qualified Health Centers will also be reimbursed for screening pediatric patients for trauma through Prop 56 funds and federal matching funds. In response to a question...
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Early childhood educators learn new ways to spot trauma triggers, build resilience in preschoolers
A hug may be comforting to many children, but for a child who has experienced trauma it may not feel safe.
That’s an example used by Julie Kurtz, co-director of trauma informed practices in early childhood education at the WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies (CCFS), as she begins a trauma training session. Her audience, preschool teachers and staff of the San Francisco-based Wu Yee Children’s Services at San Francisco’s Women’s Building, listen attentively.
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How collaboration helps clinic in San Mateo County, CA, tackle ACEs in children
Dr. Elizabeth Grady is a pediatrician at the South San Francisco Clinic, a community clinic of San Mateo Medical Center. She and Susana Flores , a senior public health nurse with San Mateo County Health, spoke with me about how the clinic and other health agencies in San Mateo have been able to craft ways to work together to prevent and heal toxic stress in children. Grady also talked about how she and Flores have been working with the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC), a group of...
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Hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands: The ACEs/trauma-informed/resilience-building movement accelerates in the San Francisco Bay Area
Last Friday, on a sunny Spring day in Santa Clara, CA, about 100 people gathered to celebrate a milestone: Over the last 10 months, 65 trainers from Trauma Transformed, a regional trauma-informed center and clearinghouse in the San Francisco Bay Area, have educated 4,048 people in six counties about trauma-informed principles and practices.
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In ACEs Connection webinar, physicians talk trauma, offer tips for helping pediatric immigrant patients
Dr. Raul Gutierrez, a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he and his fellow clinicians see constant fear and its health consequences every single day among the largely immigrant and Latino population they serve. It’s all the result of anti-immigrant policies and the news cycle that feeds the fear. Dr. Raul Gutierrez “It is almost inescapable with the repercussions of immigration policy on the radio, television, social media and from friends and family,” Gutierrez told the 69...
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Interactive training on nature and health for health care providers, Oakland, Ca
October 27, 2018 8:45 AM 5:00 PM PDT Calling all health care providers! Save the date! Saturday October 27th, 2018 Join The Center for Nature and Health and Primary Care Clinic, UCSF Benioff's Children's Hospital: When: Saturday, October 27th, 2018, 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. (Outdoor time included!) Where: CHORI Library, 5700 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, Ca Register now: www.bitly.com/ucsf- nature2018 Featured speakers: Daphne Miller, MD, Physician and author Jose Gonzalez, Founder, Latino...
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KQED CA Report asks: "Should Police Violence Be Viewed as a Public Health Issue?"
Framed by the story of Mario Woods' grieving mother, this California Report article includes perspectives from Palo Alto pediatrician Rhea Boyd and community leaders in San Francisco and Alameda counties, on how police violence contributes to traumatization. What is the public health solution?
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Leaders in SF public housing deal with their own and community trauma head on
Sengthong Sithounnolat, Jeris Woodson, Donald Greene, Ashley Blanco On a recent Saturday, 10 people gather around a table at the offices of Trauma Transformed in Oakland, Calif., where quotes from figures like Frederick Douglas, Nelson Mandela, and Coretta Scott King grace one wall as light streams in from a skylight above. The group is known as the Resident Warriors, which meets weekly. One participant talks of her recovery from addiction and her mother’s murder. Another mentions being...
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Lesson learned integrating ACEs science into health clinics: Staff first, THEN patients
Nearly two years ago, a team of colleagues at LifeLong Medical Clinics jumped at the opportunity to integrate practices based on ACEs science to prevent and heal trauma in their patients when it joined a two-year learning collaborative known as the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC). A few months after training began, the staff realized they had to put on the brakes.
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Marin Community Clinics in California screen babies for ACEs, provide support in effort to prevent trauma
When Marin Community Clinics (MCC) first considered screening their patients for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) they already had decided that if they were going to prevent children from acquiring ACEs, they had to take a radical approach.
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Learning How to Convince Leaders to Create Trauma-Informed Programs, Systems and Environments.
How do you build a narrative around ACEs science, bolster it with data and convince your leadership that integrating it is critical for the community you serve? Representatives from San Francisco Bay Area health and social service agencies had an opportunity on December 5 to learn about ACEs science, find data sets to help them make a case for supporting ACEs education and resiliency programs, and then role play ways to deliver powerful messages. Donielle Prince, ACEs Connection Network’s...
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A Better Normal Friday, June 19th at Noon PDT: LGBTQ+ Identity and Race in the US: An Intersectional Discussion On Historical and Generational Trauma
Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of A Better Normal, our ongoing series in which we envision the future as trauma-informed. LGBTQ+ Identity and Race in the US: An Intersectional Discussion On Historical and Generational Trauma With Panelists Rev. Dr. D. Mark Wilson and Alexander Cho, Ph.D., Moderated by ACEs Connection staff members Jenna Quinn and Alison Cebulla Friday, June 19th, 2020 Noon to 1pm, PT (3pm to 4pm ET) >>Click here to register<< Please join us...
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California reaches milestone with ACEs initiatives pulsing in all 58 counties. Next: All CA cities.
Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything.
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COVID-19 Black initiative delivers call to action in San Francisco Bay Area
As the COVID-19 pandemic began its devastating sweep through African American communities in April, Andre Chapman, CEO of the San Jose, California-based Unity Care , saw a glaring need for developing a COVID-19 prevention campaign that spoke directly to African Americans. “Many of our young folks and families really didn't understand the impact of this virus, nor did they believe much of the information that was coming through the media,” says Chapman. His organization provides housing and...
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‘Trauma on top of trauma’: Bay Area students under stress from pandemic face wildfire risks [sfchronicle.com]
By Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2020 Students in the Bonny Doon school district had been back in class — virtually — for two days before the wildfires forced them to evacuate, many fleeing for their lives in the middle of the night Wednesday. Teachers and students lost homes to the powerful wildfires raging through the charming, wooded town in the Santa Cruz Mountains. School had just started, but now Superintendent Mike Heffner, who is also the principal of the...
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ACEs & Trauma-Informed Pediatric Care in COVID-19 [ucsfbenioffchildrens.org]
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Portal & Center for Child & Community Health Register now and be eligible for 5 hours of AMA Category 1 CME credit and ABP MOC Part 2 credit. Saturday, October 10, 2020 8am - 3:30 pm Recognizing & Addressing Childhood Trauma - Dayna Long MD Trauma-Informed Care Principles in COVID-19 - Saun-Toy Trotter MFT & Ken Epstein LCSW, PhD Patient Perspective - Jen Leland MFT & Joan Jeung MD Early Adopters Discuss...
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Funding Opportunity: California Preterm Birth Initiative
The California Preterm Birth Initiative is pleased to share our spring 2021 request for applications for innovative research proposals on preterm birth! About the Opportunity Twice a year, in the spring and fall, we request research proposals via the UCSF Resource Allocation Program (RAP). The spring RAP applications are due by March 1st. What We're Looking For We are looking for proposals focused on: Reducing preterm birth rates Addressing racial disparities in preterm birth and/or...
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Speakers at children & youth conference call for systems change based in love, liberation
California can support children and youth by tackling the state’s — and the country’s — legacy of White supremacy and replacing it with a trauma-informed approach of love, empathy, and support.
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New Funding Opportunity with All in For Kids [futureswithoutviolence.org]
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA 12-COUNTY ALL IN FOR KIDS FUNDING AVAILABLE Promote Healthy Child Development, Prevent Childhood Adversity, Support Equity, Heal Trauma REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS WEBINAR ON MAY 19 Genentech and Blue Shield of California Foundation have joined Futures Without Violence and Bay Area Region First 5's to create All In For Kids, an initiative that focuses on young children (birth to 5 years of age) along with their families, caregivers, and communities. We are pleased to...
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California advocates press for expansion of visiting rights to incarcerated loved ones
In a recent nightmare, 8-year-old Jovina dreamt that her father got COVID-19. He was getting sicker, but she and her mother weren’t able to get there in time. “There,” in her father’s case, is a cell at the California Correctional Center (CCC) in Susanville, California, nearly 300 miles from where she lives in San Jose. In Jovina’s mind are a swarm of worries about her father’s welfare, her mother Benee Vejar reports. If an earthquake shakes the Bay Area, Jovina says, “What if the building...
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Peer-led organization offers San Francisco's unhoused food, work, dignity and more
He is sprawled out on the sidewalk, motionless, flushed cheeks framed by high cheekbones. He’s slender, probably in his mid-20s, his straight, coal black hair pulled back, and his orange t-shirt twisted up over his stomach. “He’s OD’ing on fentanyl!” shouts a guy holding a skateboard.