Tagged With "Alive and Well Communities"
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Re: Building a Trauma Informed Nation
So happy to hear that the event was helpful to the field! As part of the planning team, I can say that we worked really hard to 1) keep the focus on practical implementation, and 2) use technology to support network building across the country. We'd love to get feedback on how well people think we accomplished these two goals, and what could be improved next time. We also hope that this new ACEsconnection group can help keep the national conversation alive. We would like to begin...
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Interim report of the President’s opioid commission says its final report will address early intervention strategies for children with ACEs
On August 8, President Trump spoke to the opioid crisis in this country and declined to declare a national emergency as recommended by the “President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.” Instead, the President emphasized the law and order aspects of the problem and the importance of preventing drug use in the first place since addiction is so hard to overcome. The Commission will make a final report in the fall. The recently released interim report makes eight...
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Join a webinar on Friday (Jan. 11) featuring Alaska’s new statute directing state policy to incorporate principles of brain development
Please join ACEs Connection and the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) for a free 60-minute webinar this Friday (Jan. 11) starting 8:00am AK/ 9:00am PT/ 12:00pm ET that features a new Alaskan statute directing state policy to incorporate principles of brain development. Hear the story first hand from the champion of the bill in the Alaska legislature, Rep. Geran Tarr, and the lead advocacy group—the Alaska Resilience Initiative —executive director, Laura Norton-Cruz.
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Laying the Groundwork for Trauma-Informed Care
Adopting a trauma-informed approach to care offers the potential to not only improve patient health outcomes, but also enhance the well-being of health care professionals. While becoming a trauma-informed health care organization can be resource-intensive, there are relatively simple, foundational steps health care providers can take to move toward fully adopting a trauma-informed approach to care. A new CHCS brief outlines practical recommendations for health care organizations interested...
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May 26 Webinar - Resilience in Washington State: What Works and How to Make it Happen
With Suzette Fromm Reed, community psychologist, and Dario Longhi, change/sociology researcher. Presented by the Washington State ACEs and Resilience Community of Practice. May 26, 2020 at 12:00 PM. What works? What kinds of resilience increases community-wide levels of well-being and moderates ACE impacts? Come learn about the evidence of the effects of contextual resilience based on research from 108 Washington communities. How to make it happen? What we can learn from strategies employed...
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Mining the “lessons learned” from trauma legislation successes
L to R: Afomeia Tesfai, Rep. Geran Tarr, Jeff Hild _____________________________________________________________________ The planned agenda for the “Learning Series: Policy Approaches to Childhood Adversity” workshop at the 2018 ACEs Conference: Action to Access went out the window when an unexpected guest— California Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, MD —was invited to open the session and join the other participants in lively exchanges about their advocacy experiences and perspectives on...
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National Survey of Children's Health -- ACEs in children
The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) touches on multiple, intersecting aspects of children’s lives. The survey includes physical and mental health status, access to quality health care, as well as information on the child’s...
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Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains.
Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains. All trauma informed practitioners who are suffering with or who work with adults or children suffering with C-PTSD, PTSD, Developmental Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, ADHD & Sleep Disorders are welcome to apply to be considered for this study. The deadline to request and submit your application is: March 20, 2020 As a trauma...
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New director of Office of Drug Control Policy shares vision [register-herald.com]
Using the recently released opioid response plan from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources as a centerpiece, the new Office of Drug Control Policy director aims to build upon the plan with areas of his own expertise. Dr. Michael Brumage, appointed as director earlier this month, hopes to focus on the role ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) play in the opioid epidemic, as well as how providers can approach pain management with and without medication. "ACEs is a major...
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New Elementary and Secondary Education Law Includes Specific “Trauma-Informed Practices” Provisions
Legislation to replace the 14 year-old No Child Left Behind law—The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed by President Obama on Dec. 10—was widely praised by the administration, legislators of both parties in the House and Senate, and the organizations concerned about education policy from the NEA to the Education Trust. The consensus is that the bill is not perfect but provides a needed recalibration of federal authority over the states in education policy while protecting...
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New Publication in Health Promotion Practice Journal Provides a Framework for Action on ACEs
Advocates, leaders, and professionals in the child health and well-being space have identified a need for concrete steps for building resilience to prevent ACEs. Current frameworks focused on ACEs fall short of including a multilevel approach, considering the role of health equity in well-being, and providing concrete, tangible steps for implementation across the life span. The empower action model addresses childhood adversity as a root cause of disease by building resilience across...
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New Report Calls for Statewide Coordinated Response to Protect New Jersey's Children from Adverse Childhood Experiences [finance.yahoo.com]
By PR Newswire, Yahoo Finance, July 30, 2019 NEWARK, N.J., July 30, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A new report released today details the challenges New Jersey faces in addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and sets forth opportunities and actions for a coordinated statewide response to mitigate their lasting effects on children's health and well-being. ACEs are stressful or traumatic events, including abuse, neglect, domestic violence, household mental illness, household substance misuse,...
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Northeast and Mid-Atlantic trauma leaders share successes to make big change at May 1 convening
Leaders in ACEs/trauma/resilience movement from nine states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and the District of Columbia gathered for a networking call on May 1 to learn about flexible funding opportunities for states under the CARES Act, ways to get involved in advocacy, and share their successes and challenges in building statewide coalitions. The meeting of leaders was organized by ACEs Connection and the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) in response to COVID-19...
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On Reforming Suspensions: A Teacher’s Plea to California’s Lawmakers [edsource.org]
By Jason Sanchez, EdSource, August 24, 2019 Before you make any law that affects public education, please talk to teachers — teachers from rural and urban areas as well as poorer and wealthier areas. Students, parents and teachers represent the largest proportion of the population that is directly affected by laws impacting public education. Please spend most of your time talking with them to understand how they will be affected. Then talk to school and district administrators, lobbyists and...
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Opioid legislation with significant trauma provisions clears the Congress, awaits President Trump’s signature
On October 3, the U.S. Senate voted 98-1 (only Sen. Mike Lee, R-UT voted nay) to approve The SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act (H.R. 6 or previously titled the Opioid Crisis Response Act) , a final step before the President’s signature. The House approved the measure by a vote of 393-8 on September 28. The Senate approved an earlier version of this legislation on September 17 and as reported on ACEs Connection , it includes significant provisions taken from or aligned with the goals...
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Oregon bill takes preventive approach to psycho-social-spiritual impacts of climate change
A hearing will be held on April 3 on a recently introduced bill ( SB 1037 ) to create a task force to determine how to make resilience training available to all Oregonians in response to climate change. Under the bill, an 18-member task force would be created to study aspects of psychological, emotional, and psychosocial resilience education and skills training. The Oregon members of the International Transformation Resilience Coalition (ITRC), including ITRC coordinator, Bob Doppelt, have...
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Oregon psychiatrist testifies before Senate Finance Committee on the impact of childhood adversity and toxic stress on adult health
Appearing before the powerful Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC, recently, Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Health Share Oregon, devoted a significant portion of her testimony to the role of adversity and toxic stress during childhood on adult health, both physical and emotional. She explained how Health Share Oregon—that state’s largest Medicaid coordinated care organization—examined the people with the costliest health bills and found them to...
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Past child abuse may influence adult response to antidepressants [Reuters.com]
Antidepressants don’t work for everyone, and having a history of abuse during childhood may signal a low likelihood that the drugs will improve an adult’s symptoms of major depression, a recent study suggests. While there are few reliable predictors of which people will respond to specific antidepressants, lots of previous research links a history of trauma early in life with how well people tend to do on these drugs, researchers note in the journal Translational Psychiatry. "The presence of...
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Personal stories from witnesses, U.S. representatives provided an emotional wallop to House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on childhood trauma
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...
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Personal stories the set tone of hearing in U.S. Senate HELP Committee on Opioid Crisis Response Act
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...
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Pittsburgh's Resilience City Strategy (100resilientcities.org)
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...
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Policy Statement on Meeting the Needs of Families with Young Children Experiencing and At Risk of Homelessness (Oct. 2016)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development U.S. Department of Education Policy Statement on Meeting the Needs of Families with Young Children Experiencing and At Risk of Homelessness October 31, 2016 Excerpt from the report : Recent data indicate that among persons who seek shelter because they are homeless in the United States, the age group most likely to experience homelessness includes newborns or infants in the first year of life, and...
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Power of Networks Tapped for National Trauma Campaign
In a mid-April conference call led by the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP), participants from around the country—many of them active in ACEs, trauma and resilience networks—discussed the wave of trauma that is certain to slam communities in the wake of COVID-19. They also cheered a bit of hopeful news: the announcement of $3 billion in federal funding, the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, a portion of the CARES Act. The funds are flexible block grants for...
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Preventable trauma in childhood costs north America and Europe US$ 1.3 trillion a year [WHO]
By World Health Organization (photo by WHO/Malin Bring) The findings of a new study on the life-course health consequences and associated annual costs of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) show that preventable trauma in childhood costs north America and the European Region US$ 1.3 trillion a year. The article, published in the Lancet and co-authored by Dinesh Sethi and Jonathon Passmore, Programme Manager, Violence and Injury Prevention, WHO/Europe, looks at the legacy of ACEs and their...
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Rural Areas Have The Highest Suicide Rates And Fewest Mental Health Workers (huffingtonpost.com)
There is a severe shortage of mental health workers across the U.S., but the problem is most pronounced in rural areas. There isn’t a single psychiatrist in 65 percent of nonmetropolitan counties , and almost half of those counties don’t have a psychologist, according to a report from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine released this month. But even when a rural area does have some mental health workers, they alone usually can’t address the entire population’s needs. Many residents...
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Senate HELP Committee schedules hearing on April 11 on draft opioid bill with key provisions addressing trauma and seeks stakeholder comments
Key provisions that are closely aligned with sections the Heitkamp-Durbin “Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families Act (S. 774)” are included in opioid legislation that is advancing in the U.S. Senate. A draft bill, “The Opioid Crisis Response Act,” is the subject of a hearing on Wednesday, April 11 in the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee and a mark-up of the legislation is expected over the next several weeks. Senator Heitkamp’s office highlighted three...
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Separating Children from Parents Can Impair Brain Development (npscoalition.org)
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...
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September 2017 Special Issue of Academic Pediatrics: Child Well-Being and Adverse Childhood Experiences in the US
The United States is on the threshold of advancing much needed improvements in child and population well-being by addressing the epidemic of adverse childhood experiences and finding ways to come together, use what we know, and heal and catalyze a new epidemic of child and family flourishing. A special issue of Academic Pediatrics highlights new national research with inspiring commentaries across a wide range of leaders, each of whom calls out the critical importance of an immediate, strong...
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SPARCC’s Six Regions | Igniting New Approaches to Equity & Opportunity (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
The Strong, Prosperous, And Resilient Communities Challenge – or SPARCC – is a three-year, $90 million initiative that will empower communities and bolster local groups to ensure that major new infrastructure investments lead to better opportunities for all. SPARCC is excited to announce its initial cohort of six sites, empowering communities to advance initiatives that lead to more equitable outcomes. SPARCC’s initial six sites are: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Memphis, and the...
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Sponsorship Opportunity to Help Community Resilience Initiative
CRI is seeking various levels of sponsors for our Fourth Annual Beyond Paper Tigers conference. We would love if you would consider partnering with us to assist our community's education, best practices, and treatment strategies. Sponsorships will help pay for speakers, meals, supplies, and conference activities. To partner with us at our highest gift level- as a lead sponsor- would bring profound impact to our conference. We would be grateful for the honor of calling you our lead sponsor,...
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Stanford’s Chief Wellness Officer Aims To Prevent Physician Burnout (californiahealthline.org)
Stanford Medicine hired Dr. Tait Shanafelt as chief wellness officer last year, not so much for the well-being of the patients — but of the physicians. An oncologist and hematologist by training, Shanafelt, 46, has become a national leader in the movement to end physician “burnout” — the cumulative effect of years of stress that can compromise patient care and cause doctors to leave medicine. After 12 years at the Mayo Clinic, Shanafelt now heads up Stanford’s WellMD Center , dedicated to...
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State Laws and Resolutions with specific reference to ACEs and trauma-informed policy
Click here for an annotated list of state laws that have been enacted and resolutions that have passed (resolutions do not require the governor's signature) that make specific references to adverse childhood experiences, the ACE Study, or...
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State of Balance
What activities return us to a state of balance? As a society we push and encourage each other to go above and beyond on a daily basis. I am no exception. According to Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan in their Article “Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure” a state of balance is achieved through recharging. Not the message I received from my father. What I heard from him was all about endure and a little about recharge and that is what he modeled. When he died at 51 from...
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State Policy Guide on Preventing and Healing Childhood Trauma
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children. --Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa Every child needs access to the opportunities that prepare him or her to compete in the changing economies and realities of the 21st century. Unfortunately, for too many children, exposure to violence and traumatic events in the home, school, or community can affect them throughout their entire lives . We are thrilled to release this brand new...
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State Policy Solutions: Helping Children by Addressing Maternal Depression
Around 12 percent of mothers in the U.S. experience depression, and that number is even higher for minorities and those that live in poverty. Beyond affecting their own health, maternal depression can greatly impact mothers' capacity to care for their children. Members of PolicyLab’s Intergenerational Family Services portfolio wrote a brief on how states can address maternal depression through actionable, evidence-based policy solutions. We hope this can be helpful in your work as well. You...
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Strategies to combat trauma addressed in second of three congressional briefings
U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) (above) delivered a strong and passionate call to address childhood adversity to reap a “huge payback” in combating addiction, family violence, and poor education -- the “challenges that confront American families.” [For a video of the briefing, click here . It begins at 17:13 minutes with the first presentation by Andrea Blanch. The sound improves at 23:11 minutes when Sen. Heitkamp's remarks begin.] The July 14th event was the second of three...
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Study: Community Trauma from Gun Violence Results in Negative Health and Behavioral Outcomes (Violence Policy Center)
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...
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Study Finds Racial Gap Between Who Causes Air Pollution And Who Breathes It (npr.org)
Scientists and policymakers have long known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in neighborhoods with more pollution of all kinds, than white Americans. And because pollution exposure can cause a range of health problems, this inequity could be a driver of unequal health outcomes across the U.S. A study published Monday in the journal PNAS adds a new twist to the pollution problem by looking at consumption. While we tend to think of factories or power plants as the source of...
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The Academy on Violence & Abuse (AVA)
The AVA, which raises awareness and influences changes in the way the issues of violence and abuse are addressed in health profes sional education and its academic communities, has produced a four -hour video about the...
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The ACEs movement in the time of Trump
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...
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The Key to Healthy Cities and Hearts Might Come from the Ground (nationswell.com)
Her neighborhood is one of the four neighborhoods in south Louisville that has embarked on a $15 million, five-year study that will once and for all answer if health is tied to an area’s tree canopy. The study launched in 2018 when researchers collected baseline information about the neighborhood’s air pollution and resident’s heart health. Over the next three years, they’ll plant trees and monitor those same residents. In 2022, they’ll observe any changes. As early as 1984, researchers were...
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The Michigan ACEs Initiative: Building Resilience, Healing Communities
The Michigan ACEs initiative hosted the largest convening of ACEs professionals in the state of Michigan. Dr. Robert Anda, Co-Principal Investigator of the original ACEs study, Co-Founder ACE Interface and also featured in RESILIENCE , opened the conference and introduced keynote speaker, Christina Bethell, PhD, MBA, MPH, Professor, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University and Director, Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative in Baltimore, MD, to an audience of...
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The myth, misconception and misdirection of motive in mass shootings
But if we want to prevent shootings, asking about motive will just get you a useless answer to the wrong question. If you use the lens of the science of adverse childhood experiences, the answer reveals itself, and usually pretty quickly.
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The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has a variety of projects which intersect with research on adverse childhood experiences and trauma. Although many projects and training opportunities are designed for sitting judicial...
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's ACEs/trauma-informed/resilience-building projects
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) Adverse Childhood Experiences page collects the latest news and perspectives about ACEs, " The Truth About ACEs " (a graphic describing ACEs), and videos. RWJF supports many projects that...
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Trauma and ACEs missing in response to opioid crisis, says national organization
A new policy brief (attached) issued this week by the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) forcefully develops the case for trauma-informed approaches to address the opioid crisis—to prevent and treat addiction—based on strong evidence that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at the root of the crisis. CTIPP is a national organization that advocates for trauma-informed prevention and treatment programs at the federal, state and local levels. Successful strategies to...
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Trauma-informed Care: It Takes More Than a Clipboard and a Questionnaire
California is about to launch an ambitious campaign to train tens of thousands of Medi-Cal providers to screen children and adults up to age 65 for trauma, starting on January 1, 2020. It is well-established that the early identification of trauma and providing the appropriate treatment are critical tools for reducing long-term health care costs for both children and adults. Research has shown that individuals who experienced a high number of traumatic childhood events are likely to die...
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Traumatic Experiences Widespread Among U.S. Youth, New Data Show
[This is a media release from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.] New national data show that at least 38 percent of children in every state have had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience or ACE, such as the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has been suicidal or had a drug or alcohol problem. In 16 states, at least 25 percent of children have had two or more ACEs. Findings come from data in the 2016 National Survey...
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Two studies shed light on state legislators’ views on ACEs science and trauma policy
New and returning lawmakers take the oath of office on day one of Washington state's 2017 legislative session. — Jeanie Lindsay/Northwest News Network As advocates prepare to see how ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) science, trauma, and resilience play out in the 2020 state legislative sessions — many beginning in January — they are undoubtedly asking: “What does a legislator want?" It may be a stretch to play on Freud’s question: “What does a women want?", but the query captures how...
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U.S. Sen. Heitkamp headlines May 25 briefing—trauma is “key”
When U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp arrived mid-way through the May 25, 2016, congressional briefing on the Science of Trauma, she delivered her remarks (starts at 27:48 through 41:45) with passion, humor, and most of all, a sense of urgency to the room full of Capitol Hill staff and a smattering of advocates. Her message was macro as well as micro—change national policy to incorporate what the science tells us about trauma, and see and respond to the needs of those you encounter in everyday...