Found in Translation , a nonprofit that trains low-income, bilingual immigrant women and places them in jobs at prestigious hospitals in the Boston area. Launched by Maria Vertkin (a Russian immigrant herself) in 2011, the organization has recruited 158 participants that collectively speak about a dozen languages, including Spanish, Haitian Creole, Arabic and Portuguese. Interpreters act as cultural brokers. During one prep class, for instance, trainees debated the appropriate gender for a...

In the solidly red state of Utah, lawmakers approved and sent to Gov. Gary Herbert a resolution ( H.C.R. 10 ) on March 7 to encourage state policy and programs to incorporate ACEs science to address “severe emotional trauma and other adverse childhood experiences” in children and adults and implement evidence-based interventions to increase resiliency. Every recorded vote cast by Democrats and Republicans favored the resolution. A detailed context for the recommendations was included in the...

Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto and Chief Resilience Officer Grant Ervin celebrated an important milestone: the release of ONEPGH , Pittsburgh’s first-ever City Resilience Strategy. Pittsburgh’s story is a familiar one for post-industrial cities across the United States – and around the world. This city lost 40 percent of its population between 1970 and 2006, and faces a range of day-to-day stresses and potential shocks as it recovers from its past and experiences the known and unknown...

When your culture doesn't believe in medicine, how can a hospital bridge that gap and provide health care when you really need it? That was the Hmong community's dilemma when they resettled in Merced, California. Originally from the rural mountains of southeast Asia, the Hmong mainly worked as farmers before getting caught in the crossfires of the Vietnam War. With the death toll rising, the Hmong were forced to flee to countries such as Thailand, France, and the United States. Mercy Medical...

Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., announced that he is planning to start the Saved by American Immigrants National Taskforce or “ SAINT ” to collect stories of immigrants - both documented and undocumented - who have positively contributed to U.S. society through heroic or lifesaving acts. There are many Americans who are alive today only because of the heroic acts of immigrants who saved their lives. Watch the complete announcement here . Polis started the taskforce in response to President...

Join Us! Wednesday March 1, 2017 from 1:00PM - 2:30PM Location: Washington D.C.; Building & Room: TBA The National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives , First Focus and the Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at Pennsylvania State University will co-host a briefing with nationally recognized experts and legislative perspectives on child and intergenerational poverty. for more information: http://www.npscoalition.org/child-poverty-announcement

As with any remarkable change, the 2016 presidential election, a swirl of intense acrimony that foreshadowed current events, actually produced a couple of major opportunities for the ACEs movement. It stripped away the ragged bandage covering a deep, festering wound of classicism, racism, and economic inequality. This wound burst painfully, but it’s now open to the air and sunlight, the first step toward real healing. The second opportunity is how the election and its aftermath are engaging...

Disconnected youth are teenagers and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither working nor in school. There are 5,527,000 disconnected youth in America today, or one in seven teens and young adults (13.8 percent). Momentum is growing across the nation to tackle the issue of youth disconnection. From the presidential initiative My Brother’s Keeper to the analyses of pundits and scholars on the causes of civic unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore, evidence abounds that society is...

In the final weeks of the 114 th Congress, Senators Heitkamp, Durbin, and Franken introduced The Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families Act (S. 3519)—a wide ranging bill that proposes new strategies to expand trauma-informed best practices and models, train clinicians, law enforcement officials, teachers and health care providers in trauma-informed approaches, and improve the understanding of trauma’s impact and prevalence. Despite the lack of fanfare around the bill’s introduction,...

Note: Arthur Evans, PhD, head of the City of Philadelphia's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, has long been a leader in the trauma-informed movement, implementing recovery-oriented services for individuals served by the city, working to foster cross system collaboration with programs such Police Crisis Intervention (CIT), implementing early intervention initiatives for infants and toddlers, and using art to transform communities. As head of the APA, Arthur...

Japanese-Americans who lived through the incarceration or whose parents were in the camps say the negative rhetoric about Muslims and immigrants today reminds them of the racism they encountered decades ago and how damaging the experience was to the health and well-being of their community. Japanese-Americans worry immigrants and Muslims could suffer from the same lasting effects their incarceration had on them and their descendants. “A lot of the reactions were defense mechanisms —...

The Administration for Children and Families, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrations, the Administration for Community Living, the Offices of the Assistant Secretary for Health and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at HHS have worked together to develop this Guide to Trauma-Informed Human Services. The guide is intended to provide an introduction to the topic of trauma, a discussion of why understanding and addressing trauma is important for human...