Photo: Jeff Zients speaks during a news briefing at Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Marcella Nunez-Smith has been selected for a top role focused on health disparities By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and TYLER PAGER 12/03/2020 12:14 PM EST Updated: 12/03/2020 01:58 PM EST President-elect Joe Biden has tapped two close allies to oversee his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to two people familiar with the decision.

The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice ( CTIPP ) is inviting individuals and organizations to express their support for a set of executive actions for the Biden-Harris Administration to take “to address trauma and build resilience throughout the country.” Most of these actions could be taken early in the Administration and would not require congressional action with the exception of some recommendations that could be included in a new stimulus package. The recommendations are...

The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) was created in December 2016 by representatives from diverse sectors, including education, mental health, justice, civil society, and government. We share a common commitment to preventing violence in all its forms and promoting healthy, just, and resilient communities. We inform and advocate for public policies and practices that incorporate scientific findings about the relationship between trauma, health, and well-being across...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has just launched a three-year, four-state, $6-million project, “Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences: Data to Action (PACE-D2A)” with the potential to energize an already blossoming movement of statewide community-based initiatives to address ACEs. The CDC awards of $500,000 annually for three years, announced on August 25 , were given to the Department of Public Health in Georgia and Massachusetts, the Office of Early Childhood in...

Nicole Daley (left), Director, Division of Violence and Injury Prevention, Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) and Lauren Cardoso, Epidemiologist, Child & Youth Violence Prevention, MDPH Nicole Daley and Lauren Cardoso were just a few months into their new positions with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) when COVID-19 and racial reckoning swept across the United States, creating both challenge and opportunity in their work. In this new environment, Daley...

By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post, November 18, 2020 Political pressure is mounting for president-elect Joe Biden to use executive authority to cancel federal student debt as a form of economic stimulus, a proposal that is exposing sharp divisions among economists, consumer activists and policy wonks. On Wednesday, 238 nonprofit and community organizations — including the NAACP and American Federation of Teachers — urged Biden to take action on loan forgiveness on his first...

By Lissy Romanow, Stanford Social Innovation Review, November 19, 2020 In the months leading up to any US presidential election, grassroots organizers of all types—community, labor, and electoral—usually undertake a predictable set of exercises. They register people to vote, familiarize voters with the candidates, and then turn people out to the polls. But the challenges of 2020 heightened the stakes of this year’s election to an existential level. Yes, Americans faced political struggle.

By Richard E. Besser, USA Today, November 19, 2020 One thing scientists know with certainty is that viruses don’t get pandemic fatigue, but people do. This matters today as America enters a dangerous period in which the actions of government and individuals will likely determine how many people die and whose lives our society values. We’ve known since the dawn of this pandemic that winter would be especially bad in terms of disease transmission . Many politicians put forth a different...

By Bob Sege and Kay Johnson, 11/19/20, positiveexperiences.org/blog This week, we focus on opportunities to spread HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) with the new Biden-Harris Administration. With the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, families feel more stress than before, adding to long-simmering concerns about child poverty and its implications. On a more positive note, the recent resurgence in calls for racial justice have spurred many more Americans to work...

By Gabe Salazar and Meryl Schulman, Center for Health Care Strategies, November 13, 2020 Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — such as abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, exposure to violence, and being subjected to prejudice and racism — can negatively impact a child’s developing brain and body, as well as long-term health and social outcomes. In New Jersey, over 40 percent of children are estimated to have experienced at least one ACE , and 18 percent are estimated to have experienced...

By Morgan C. Mullings, The Bay State Banner, November 5, 2020 U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley is introducing a bill to fight childhood trauma, as children across the nation witness multiple crises that will shape their future. The STRONG Support for Children Act targets the root causes of childhood trauma and the inequities that contribute to it through grant funding for public health services. In a virtual conversation on Oct. 27, Pressley brought together several Boston residents who...

Californians have experienced an alarming epidemic of adverse childhood experiences. Between 2011 and 2017, 60 percent of Californians reported experiencing at least one type of childhood adversity; about 16 percent experienced four or more. People who experience four or more ACEs are 1.5 times as likely to have heart disease, 1.9 times as likely to have a stroke, and 3.2 times as likely to have asthma as people who have experienced no ACEs. (For more information about ACEs and ACEs science,...