Committee reports for the fiscal year 2019 funding bills for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor/HHS) call for the Office of the Surgeon General to report on the connection between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and negative long-term health outcomes, including future substance misuse. The House Appropriations Committee report contains stronger and more specific language than the Senate report—it directs the Office of the Surgeon General to submit a...

Last month, writing for Business Insider , Leanna Garfield noted that, “Hundreds of malls and thousands of mall-based stores have shuttered in the past two decades, and many more may close within the next 10 years.” Meanwhile, homelessness, which had been declining as the Great Recession faded, has started to rise again. The federal government in 2017 reported that there were 554,000 homeless nationwide, including nearly 58,000 families with children. In Arlington, Virginia, a nonprofit...

On Friday, June 22, NorthLakes Community Clinic and event sponsors Minong Area Chamber of Commerce, Jack Link Aquatic & Activity Center, Northwood School and Sevenwinds Casino, welcomed to Minong the Wisconsin First Lady Tonette Walker and Carol Howard, executive director of Fostering Futures. Eighty-eight guests watched the documentary “Resilience,” which explains the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), or toxic stress, which has a major impact on learning in children and...

The members of the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives, a group of experts in neuroscience, behavioral science and public policy, feel compelled to issue a statement in response to the practice of separating immigrant children from their parents. And while this practice has now been halted, the damage has been done, with 2,300 having been separated with little effort being placed toward their reunification. A multitude of voices has risen up to condemn this inhumane...

Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, will present his findings from his 12-day fact-finding tour on poverty in the US to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on June 21 st . During his tour, Alston made stops in California, West Virginia, Alabama, and Puerto Rico. An early version of his findings was released in December and was covered in NPQ by both Jim Schaffer and Marty Levine , but his final report was only published a month...

A new study shows how veterans with PTSD may benefit physiologically from using service dogs. This study, led by the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine, is the first published research to use a physiological marker to define the biobehavioral effects of service dogs on veterans with PTSD. The findings were published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology , and they may be significant as scientific evidence of potential mental health benefits experienced by veterans with PTSD...

In a week when two celebrities, first the designer Kate Spade and then the chef and television host Anthony Bourdain , took their own lives, new federal data was released showing that suicide rates have been increasing for years in almost every state and across demographic lines. The escalating crisis has affected nearly every group and place , but the study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that some parts of the country have been hit especially hard. Here’s a...

Last evening I posted a video of a June 5 congressional briefing that I attended on trauma and the opioid crisis with a plan to write a post about the event today. In the comfort of my living room, I played the beginning of the video, hoping to find a good screen shot to use with the article, but instead was surprisingly moved by the second listening of the words of U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) about why the issue of trauma is so important her: She says it gives her hope.

Suicide rates rose steadily in nearly every state from 1999 to 2016 , increasing 25 percent nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. In 2016, there were more than twice as many suicides as homicides. The figures were released two days after the death of celebrity designer Kate Spade . The New York City medical examiner’s office has ruled her death a suicide . The new analysis found that nearly 45,000 Americans aged 10 or older died by their own hand in...

Why Equity Matters In a Culture of Health , everyone has the opportunity to live a healthier life, no matter who we are, where we live, or how much money we make. Personal responsibility plays a key role in health, but the choices we make depend on the choices we have available to us. We must work together to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to make healthy choices, and to achieve better health for all. Across the nation, gaps in health are large, persistent and increasing. Health...

Sen. Res. 346 , the companion bill to the already passed House resolution, was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate on May 22. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was the sponsor of the resolution that attracted bipartisan co-sponsorship prior to the vote. The House version was sponsored by Rep. Mike Gallagher and Rep. Danny Davis who made statements on the bill as reported earlier on ACEs Connection.

It is both remarkable and natural that the theme of the 2018 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) May 10th Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day event was “Partnering for Health and Hope Following Trauma”—remarkable to hear “ACEs” and “trauma-informed” roll off the tongues of all the federal officials (some seasoned, some new appointees in the Trump Administration) and natural as the awareness of ACEs science grows at lighting speed…at least it feels that way.