Health and Wellness Town Hall - August 5th, 2020 3-4:30PM PDT Adverse Childhood Experiences 101 Class How ACEs Impact the Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other Communities of Color This event will be led by Alfred White. Alfred is the founder of The League of Extraordinary People. After nearly 40 years experiencing homelessness, Alfred swallowed a 1/4 ounce of crack cocaine in 2004 and nearly died. He awoke paralyzed and that is when he made the decision to seek help for his history of...

Inspired her work with ACEs, resilience and Walla Walla’s Community Resilience Initiative , documentary-film director Amy L. Erickson created Visceral: transforming trauma though theatre , which has its first screening at the 5 th Annual “Beyond Paper Tigers” conference June 24-25, 2020. The film features a number of Walla Walla residents, including Etiene Vela, a student at Walla Walla Community College (WWCC), whose life is transformed by performing in WWCC productions with Kevin Loomer,...

By Dahlia Bazzaz, July 9, 2020, Seattle Times. A group of seven elementary school PTAs in South Seattle has secured $100,000 in funding to help families make it through the current financial crisis. The gift marks one of the Seattle Foundation’s largest awards for coronavirus relief to date. In addition to its size, this type of grant is relatively rare. The Seattle Foundation, one of the city’s major philanthropic nonprofits that awards about $125 million yearly, seldom receives or grants...

Regulation Before Education: The Roots and Fruits of a Trauma-Informed School July 29-31st | 12:00 - 3:00pm EDT These times are unsettling in many ways. But the disruptions have widened opportunities for different ways of being, thinking and doing in education. The trauma-informed schools movement has never been more relevant. Schools committed to cultivating trauma-informed change can successfully buffer the adverse effects of the pandemic, economic collapse, and persistent racial...

Community Embracing Diversity for Resilience - Virtual Conference brought to you by the LC Valley Resilience Coalition 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM -- $65 Keynote Speaker: Joe Neigel – Certified Prevention Specialist, BA in History and English at UW Joe works with the WA State Community Prevention and Wellness Initiative (CPWI) at Monroe School District. Through the work of Joe’s program, the Monroe Community Coalition, there have been drastic reductions of drug and alcohol use and suicide in Monroe...

By Lila Shroff, July 2, 2020, KUOW. Over the past two decades, while juvenile incarceration rates have been decreasing, rates of incarcerated girls have either stayed the same, or increased . In response, the Kitsap County Girls Court opened in June 2019 as Washington state’s first court system providing service just for girls. A few months ago, I went to see Girls Court in action. [ Please click here to read more. ]

At this point, COVID-19 has been a part of our lives for nearly six months now. While the most recent current events are not unfamiliar social problems, this pandemic has provided us with a stronger lens with which to see many of the underlying inequities within our communities. This article, “The Moral Determinants of Health,” explores these inequities by illustrating the systemic imbalances within the field of medicine and the amount of resources we allocate to solving problems as opposed...

Fact Sheet from the Urban Indian Health Institute shares ways to support communities experiencing multiple trauma during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. How can organizations... Be more transparent about COVID-19? Emotionally support the people they serve through telehealth services? Support staff in caring for themselves and their communities? Support communities in handling their emotions? Work together to heal their communities? To download the fact sheet and/or view other COVID-19...

By Pamela Hartzband, M.D., a nd Jerome Groopman, M.D. June, 25, 2020, N Engl J Med 2020; 382:2485-2487 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2003149. Before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, each day seemed to bring another headline about the crisis of physician burnout. The issue had been simmering for years and was brought to a boil by mounting changes in the health care system, most prominently the widespread implementation of the electronic health record (EHR) and performance metrics. 1 Initially, the...

May 5, 2020 Counties are often faced with an array of unique funding and capacity pressures. During crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s more important than ever for county officials to prioritize where and how they use their already-limited resources. The latest brief from Stepping Up’s In Focus series— Prioritizing Policy, Practice, and Funding Improvements —provides county officials with guidance on how to identify the most impactful changes needed to reduce the number of people in...

Whether or not to screen for ACEs in primary care is an important debate—and I hear and respect the passion from both sides of the argument. I fall in the “pro-ACE assessments” camp, but with some important caveats. I think that assessments for ACEs are dramatically different from screening for autism or developmental delays. In my opinion, assessments for ACEs in primary care should be primarily about building relationships.

In light of the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and far too many others, Greater Columbia Accountable Community of Health (GCACH) mourns with the nation in pain, anger and frustration. Together we stand with the Black community and all allies in the fight against racism and injustice, and we say with one voice, Black Lives Matter. Our mission at GCACH is to advance the health of our population by decreasing health disparities and empowering individuals and...