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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...

As a former La Leche League Leader I became familiar with the teachings of Gary Ezzo (“Raising Kids God’s Way,” "On Becoming Babywise") in the early 1990’s. Leaders in my area began getting a lot of phone calls on our warm line that followed the same basic story: a baby not thriving and a case of very low milk supply despite the Mom’s exclusive breastfeeding and a strong desire to breastfeed. It gradually emerged that a local church had begun promoting a rigid rules-based practice of baby...

https://www.jamesencinas.com/forum/opening-the-narrative/kendall-evans-a-transition-august-8th-2020-a-tribute

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...

Sixty years ago this summer I told. My parents fought to have my perpetrator removed from the organization - to no avail. They were accused of being the ones with the problem because they could not forgive, forget and move on. Thank God, my parents did move on. They left that group. Their belief in me and their sacrificial actions gave me the foundation to thrive. However, the abuse became flesh and dwelt inside me and for decades I suffered great gynecological problems. Recent studies link...

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...

ACEs initiative participants in communities where there is tension between the community and law enforcement will want to join Becky Haas in a compelling conversation on law enforcement, ACEs science, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement and protests. Haas is a nationally recognized adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) science initiative builder and trainer. She and colleagues Renee Wilson-Simmons, the head of the ACE Awareness Foundation of Memphis, Tennessee, and Maggi Duncan,...

In 2012, Greater Richmond SCAN and five other community partners hatched a one-year plan to educate the Richmond, Virginia, community about ACEs science and to embed trauma-informed practices. Eight years later, the original group has evolved into the Greater Richmond Trauma-Informed Community Network (GRTICN) with 495 people and 170 organizations. And they're just scratching the surface.

“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.”

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...

By Barbara Plett Usher, July 12, 2020, bbc.co.uk. From FaceTiming worried families to helping doctors and nurses with "combat fatigue", spiritual care workers in hospitals have been thrust onto the pandemic's frontlines. Rocky Walker has come closer to death as a hospital chaplain in the coronavirus pandemic than he did as a soldier in the 1991 Gulf War. "It was very scary, very dangerous," he says. "Working in the ICUs and seeing all that suffering and seeing families being decimated by...

While we know that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can cause risk behaviors, research has told us that the presence of protective factors can help mitigate the effects of ACEs. Common risk behaviors such as smoking tobacco and alcohol misuse can be a result from the trauma of childhood disadvantage. In responding to ACEs, public health research proposes that protective factors such as safe, stable, nurturing relationships (SSNRs) with a caring adult can mitigate the long-term effects of...