By Amanda Michelle Gomez, Washington City Paper, August 30, 2019 October 30, 2018 was different—that was the day the job got personal for Beverly Smith-Brown. She works for the Alliance of Concerned Men, where she’s on alert 24-hours a day, seven days a week, to respond when residents suffer gunshot and stab wounds in Southeast D.C. While working as a trauma-informed advocate at a crime scene in Ward 8, she got a phone call from her sister: Her nephew, 25-year-old Taquan Smith, was shot...

By Angela Helm, The Root, June 14, 2019. What Taraji P. Henson has been able to do with her first Boris L. Henson Foundation benefit and conference last weekend was nothing short of a revelation—and right on time. The Empire star and Oscar-nominated actress is a native Washingtonian and Howard University graduate. So, it was only fitting that her inaugural foundational event, named for her father, who navigated addiction and mental health issues, be in the city where he lived and worked.

By Wilson Criscione, Inlander, June 5, 2019. Dr. Robert Zarr steps into the patient room and sees a teenage girl. Lately, the 17-year-old has been experiencing repeated panic attacks, giving her so much chest pain that she had to be rushed to the emergency room each time. She's looking for answers from Dr. Zarr. Instead, it's Zarr who asks a question. "Do you have a way to spend time outside?" he says. "Well, there's this hammock at my dad's house," she replies. "What about lying there for a...

ACEs Connection presents, "Starting & Growing Resilient Communities: Online & In Real Life (IRL)", an interactive webinar training series focused on developing existing and potential online community managers and IRL ACEs champions. This series is dedicated to providing insight into creating sustainable and effective online & IRL ACEs initiatives. In this fifth session, we’ll talk about why it's so critical to tell your story far and wide. This incudes how to blog and share...

D r. Robert Zarr steps into the patient room and sees a teenage girl. Lately, the 17-year-old has been experiencing repeated panic attacks, giving her so much chest pain that she had to be rushed to the emergency room each time. She's looking for answers from Dr. Zarr. Instead, it's Zarr who asks a question. "Do you have a way to spend time outside?" he says. "Well, there's this hammock at my dad's house," she replies. "What about lying there for a while, and just noticing the leaves?" Zarr...

Press Release March 11, 2019 AUSTIN, Texas — At the annual South by Southwest Conference, Kaiser Permanente today announced a partnership with Community Solutions to help accelerate efforts to end chronic homelessness in 15 communities (scroll down for list) within Kaiser Permanente’s national footprint. As part of the new partnership, Kaiser Permanente will provide $3 million over a three-year period to Community Solutions’ Built for Zero initiative, which uses real-time data to help local...

Join us in Hagerstown, MD, for the next training in our series focused on trauma informed strategies for the community! Unconditional Care features three dynamic speakers focused on how addressing issues of self- care and self-awareness lead to the outcomes we all are striving for children, families and neighborhoods. Group rates are available for organizations registering ten or more attendees, contact Kerry Fair at 240-513-6370 or kfair@besterhope.org to arrange. Our last several trainings...

This series was produced as part of the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism Fellowship with a grant from the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-Being. Other stories in this series include: The Cost of Juvenile Trauma HillRag Wednesday, January 9, 2019 “I have to meet this guy and have sex with him. If I don’t, then he and his friends are going to rape my little sister,” a student at Frank Ballou High School in Ward 8’s Congress Heights told her teacher. The teacher...

The student comes in for a pregnancy test - the second time she's asked for one in matter of weeks. She's 15. She lives with her boyfriend. He wants kids - he won't use protection. She loves him, she says. But she doesn't want to get pregnant. She knows how much harder it would be for her to finish high school. At many schools, she would have gotten little more than some advice from a school nurse. But here at Anacostia High School in Washington, D.C., she gets a dose of midwife Lorel...

I woke up in an ambulance. The last thing I could remember was standing on a ledge in an auditorium and practicing for my school’s choir performance. I was in ninth grade, it was my first field trip in my new home here in the United States, and I was nervous. Then everything went black. I had fainted. Although my front teeth bore the brunt of my fall and saved me from serious injury, I had broken them all. As the paramedic gently explained to me why there was blood gushing from my mouth, he...

Reminder of tomorrow's ( Wednesday, January 10, 10am PST/1:00 PM EST) webinar on State Policy Approaches to Addressing Childhood Adversity Please join us for a three -part learning series hosted by the California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity and ACEs Connection . We'll hear from states that are making great strides towards adopting trauma-informed policies and practices. Three-Part Learning Series: Webinar 1: Overview of State Level Efforts to Address Childhood Adversity and...

Please join us for a three -part learning series hosted by the California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity and ACEs Connection . We'll hear from states that are making great strides towards adopting trauma-informed policies and practices. Three-Part Learning Series: Webinar 1: Overview of State Level Efforts to Address Childhood Adversity and Highlights from Oregon, Tennessee, and Wisconsin Date: January 10th, 10AM PST (1:00 PM EST) Speakers: Elizabeth Prewitt, Policy Analyst, ACEs...