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The coronavirus pandemic has taken a serious toll on the mental health struggles of Americans, particularly young adults. According to a recent survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, out of more than 5,000 respondents who were contacted in late June, 25.5 percent of adults between the ages of 18-24 reported having “seriously considered suicide” due to the pandemic. By comparison, 10.7 percent of all respondents reported having suicidal ideations. “Mental health...

Now we were in a pandemic, and I’m a science journalist who has written about infectious disease and medical research for nearly a decade. I was on fire, cranking out stories , explaining epidemiological concepts in my social networks, trying to help everyone around me make sense of the frightening circumstances of a pandemic and the anxiety surrounding the virus . I knew it wouldn’t last. It never does. But even knowing I would eventually crash, I didn’t appreciate how hard the crash would...

kNOw MORE! , Point Loma Nazarene University's one-of-a-kind creative human trafficking awareness and prevention program for youth and families, is now available for distance learning! In this moment of pandemic, young people are spending significantly more time online, increasing their vulnerabilities to trafficking. Human trafficking education is more important now than ever. kNOw MORE! utilizes the same student-centered multimedia teaching style with dramas that have shifted to film, live...

When Christina Bethell was little, she lived in a low-income housing complex in Los Angeles where her neighbor, a quiet lady the kids called Mrs. Raccoon, always had her door open for the neighborhood kids. Every Saturday she threw a little tea party with candy to celebrate any child with a birthday that week. Bethell fondly remembers the woman’s kindness as source of comfort during her challenging childhood. Dr. Bethell, now a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public...

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. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...

By Brett Simpson, San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 2020 On Wednesday afternoon, over 300 California educators, parents, and students tuned into Facebook Live to hear high school students speak honestly about their own experiences of racism, implicit bias, and trauma at school. The “ Student Support Circle: Institutional Racism and Implicit Bias ,” was co-hosted by the California Department of Education and the National Equity Project, and is the first among several initiatives state...

Learn4Life quickly realized that in order to reach students’ heads, we needed to reach their hearts. So, we designed the Trauma-Resilient Educational Communities (TREC ) Model which is based on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) science and protocols. TREC is an active approach to understanding trauma. We do more than explain the effects of trauma and encourage understanding amongst our teachers, counselors and staff. All our employees are trained and receive credentials in the foundations...

We know that 200,000 teen girls give birth every year in the U.S., but what about the other half of the equation – the 200,000 fathers? Unfortunately, only about 33 percent of fathers under 18 stick around to help raise the child. When you consider that 70% of those teen moms don’t graduate – it’s not hard to imagine why. Meet Ricky C., 19, who brings his 4-month-old son to school with him every day. He is on track to graduate later this year and grateful that Learn4Life has a dedicated...

The ACEs Connection Cooperative of Communities launches today. We want to continue to contribute to the ACEs movement for as long as it takes to create a worldwide healing-centered culture based on ACEs science. We want that to take hold in this world in the same way electricity has — we only notice it if it isn’t there. First, a clarification: Nothing on ACEsConnection.com changes! Membership remains free! Everything our current 300+ communities use stays free, and remains free for new ones.

In this time of great uncertainty in the world, a new approach to leadership is needed: one that recognizes the paramount importance of compassion . As workers face new challenges they’ve never encountered before, expressions of empathy from leaders — as well as other colleagues — have been critical to employee well-being and productivity. And as stay-at-home orders lift and more companies open their doors to their workforce, offering kindness and support to teammates is key to a smoother...

Interest Based: ACEs & African Americans ACEs and Nourishment ACEs Connection for Birth Workers ACEs Connection Resources Center ACEs in Early Childhood ACEs in Education ACEs in Foster Care ACEs in Higher Education ACEs in Maternal Health ACEs in Medical Schools ACEs in Nursing Science ACEs in Pediatrics ACEs in the Criminal Justice System ACEs in the Faith-Based Community ACEs in Youth Justice ACEs In Youth Services Balancing ACEs with HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences)...

Trauma-sensitive educators told us that no matter how the remote learning is taking place across the district, (from direct instruction online as a class group, to remote learning with no face-to-face contact with a teacher or peers, etc.), having a regular time several times a week set aside for students to talk with their teachers —whether it be face to face, on a device or voice only on a phone— is critically important to buffer the traumatic impact of the current situation. Being able to...