By Rachel Glaser, WWMT West Michigan, February 13, 2020 Childhood trauma has life-long, wide reaching consequences, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACEs. In early February, Michigan lawmakers passed a resolution declaring that ACEs a critical health issue. State officials estimated 70% of Michigan adults experienced one ACE before the age of 18. The CDC scores people on a scale of 0-10 for adverse...

Room erupts in applause for the grandmother of witness William Kellibrew during July 11 House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing. The power of personal stories from witnesses and committee members fueled the July 11 hearing on childhood trauma in the House Oversight and Reform Committee* throughout the nearly four hours of often emotional and searing testimony and member questions and statements (Click here for 3:47 hour video). The hearing was organized into a two panels—testimony from...

Jennifer Donahue, Delaware Office of the Child Advocate, testifies before the HELP Committee (Jennifer Perry to her right) ____________________________________________________________ Some seasoned advocates say legislators are influenced by stories while their staffs are swayed by data. There was some of both at the April 11 hearing on the draft Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 of the U.S. Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee but it was the personal stories that...

Research on trauma is frequently featured in mainstream news outlets, pointing to its connection to a range of behavioral and health outcomes. While trauma can have multiple interpretations, for the purposes of this report, it is the result of experiencing or witnessing chronic and sustained violence, or specific events that can have lasting effects on individuals. Researchers have identified 13 distinct types of trauma, including community violence. Community violence is an umbrella term...

Visiting the doctor just got faster, easier and more useful in parts of rural Nevada. That's because of the Nevada Broadband Telemedicine Initiative, announced Sept. 18 at Desert View Regional Medical Center in Nye County. The $19.6 million federally funded initiative aims to increase access to specialty care, including psychiatric services, to residents in rural areas of the state. "That's huge for patient care," said Susan Davila, CEO of Desert View, one of the participating locations.

NOVEMBER 2015 A Healthy Early Childhood Action Plan: Policies for a Lifetime of Well-being highlights more than 40 policy target areas that are key to achieving national goals of reducing toxic stress and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)...

In the Feb. 14 New York Times Sunday Review, op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, calls for a public health revolution focused on the roots of many pathologies caused by chemical toxins that Americans and others around the world are exposed to (the lead-poisoned water in Flint, Michigan being just one example). In addition to lead, he describes widespread poisoning by PCBs, flame retardants and pesticides as examples but also includes toxic stress among the toxins that impact children even...

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...

By Ted Roelofs, Bridge, December 13, 2019 By now, the medical evidence is clear: Childhood trauma can have profound effects on physical and mental health. Even so, Michigan physicians like Timothy Kval remain all too rare. Working out of a Muskegon clinic, Kval evaluates more than a patient’s symptoms, blood pressure readings and cholesterol scores. He also screens adult patients for past traumatic events like physical abuse, neglect, domestic violence in the home or the loss of a parent...

Comedian turned advocate Darrell Hammond and filmmaker Michelle Esrick joined Congressional leaders for a discussion about trauma, healing, and prevention for the first forum hosted by the Congressional Trauma Informed Care Caucus (TICC).

Photo: Marlo Nash with her grandfather, Grandpa Johnny In 1918, my grandfather lost both of his parents to the Spanish flu within a week of each other. He was seven when his mother died, had his 8 th birthday the following week, then lost his father. Grandpa Johnny was separated from his three siblings and placed into the abusive home of a relative. At age 12, he escaped to live on the streets until he found his own placement with a couple as their house servant. The most he ever said about...

“Health 1.0” has dramatically increased our lifespan. But it’s essentially run health care as a cottage industry without evidence-based guidelines, quality measures, or standardization. You mess with my physician autonomy and my patient’s autonomy at your peril. And volume trumps value. “Health 2.0” seeks to upgrade health care into a 21st –century industry. We no longer see health care as a fragmented, piecemeal jumble of individual patient-doctor interactions. It can actually be an...

The hospital where I was recently treated for a blood clot, showing the facade as it was when I was a four-year old child being treated for burns _____________________________________________________ For over a decade I was a family therapist. Before that, an educator. In the past 20 years have dedicated myself to writing curriculum and designing trainings for Lakeside Global Institute primarily around the subject of trauma. I was honored when Bruce Perry invited me to be a fellow with the...

July 27, 2020 As a companion to Governor Tom Wolf’s multi-agency effort and anti-stigma initiative, Reach Out PA: Your Mental Health Matters, the Office of Advocacy and Reform (OAR) is releasing the “Trauma-Informed PA” plan to guide the commonwealth and service providers statewide on what it means to be trauma-informed and healing-centered in PA. This plan is the result of four months of work from OAR and the Trauma-Informed PA Think Tank, formed in February. The think tank was made up of...

Rep. Rosa DeLauro speaks to students at John Lyman Elementary School, Middlefield, CT A bipartisan bill ( H.R. 7868 )—Strengthening America’s Families Act (SAFA)— was introduced Friday, July 30 by lead sponsors Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL). The bill provides seed money to states to develop and enhance infant-toddler court teams (ITCTs, aka Safe Babies Court Teams) and authorizes a national resource center to guide state and local programs to develop their...

Mary Mueller likes to call herself an “opportunistic infection.” What that means is that Mueller, project coordinator for trauma-informed systems in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), is determined to share the science of ACEs and resilience wherever she goes. After Mueller attended the state’s first ACE master trainer two day session hosted by the Michigan ACE Initiative , she wanted to bring the foundational science shared by ACE Interface back home—to her MDHHS...

A mother, frantic with worry, brought her newborn in for a checkup at the pediatric clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. But there wasn’t anything wrong with the baby. And over the next several months, no amount of reassurance could convince the mom that her child was eating, sleeping and growing just fine. If anything, the mother’s worry led to behavior that raised alarm bells for her health care providers. Dr. Kate Margolis “[The family] wasn’t returning calls from the provider, and...

Photo (top left to bottom right): California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith Over the last several days, the Biden-Harris transition has announced a number of key health nominees and appointees of keen interest to the ACEs/trauma/resilience advocacy movement. While the positions taken by President-Elect Biden are consistent with the broad policy priorities of many trauma/resilience advocacy organizations, the campaign...

Thank you to everyone who was able to join this month's CTIPP CAN call, and a special thank you to Dan Jurman, Dave Ellis, Commissioner Christine Beyer, and Angela Medrano Sanchez for their wonderful and informative presentations about the work in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We learned about strategies that have proven effective for launching statewide trauma-informed initiatives. If you were unable to join, would like to watch again, or want to share with others, you can find the call...