Last year, the California Department of Health Care Services rolled out its plans for universal screening for trauma among its pediatric and adult Medicaid population. Beginning January 1, 2020, California physicians were able to receive an incentive payment of $29 for each pediatric patient screened for ACEs using the PEARLs ( Pediatrics Adverse Childhood and Resilience Study) tool. Dr. Dayna Long talked with ACEs Connection staff reporter Laurie Udesky about ACEs science, what led to the...

Almost half of all foster care youth end up in jail within two years of aging out of the system. First Place for Youth has figured out a housing and support strategy to keep these young adults out from behind bars and living on their own. Moments of stability were rare during Pamela Bolnick's childhood. She repeatedly witnessed her father beat her mother, a Venezuelan immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bolnick's mom eventually left her abusive spouse, fleeing to the Bay Area with her...

In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.

It started as an answer to a youth-led campaign. Young people in arts programs in San Francisco Bay Area schools had produced spoken word videos about inequities in their communities that helped put them at risk for type 2 diabetes. Dr. Jean Junior The response by their peers was enormous, according to Dr. Jean Junior, who volunteered for the project as a pediatric resident at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). “Young people would say ‘You’ve actually gotten me interested.