Real Life Resilience Champions

As she describes in her TED Talk from 2015, when Nadine Burke Harris stumbled into the world of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), it made her rethink her entire approach to practicing medicine. After finishing her residency, she went to work for California Pacific Medical Center and together they opened a clinic in Bayview-Hunter's Point in San Francisco. As she began her work there, she focused on improving many of the traditional health disparity measures for underserved communities. But even though she was hitting her numbers, she noticed that many kids were being referred to her for symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). For many of these kids, she did not feel like she could make a diagnosis of ADHD based on their histories. She felt like she was missing something. The dots connected for her when a colleague shared with her the findings from the original ACE study from the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente that showed strong epidemiological evidence for the link between childhood adversity and health outcomes and behaviors.  
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The story of Burke Harris and the CYW is very familiar to those in the trauma-informed movement. It is indeed a great example of how the principles of resilience can be put into action in a specific setting and transform the very foundation of how that organization operates and the outcomes it achieves. There are many other examples from other sectors. These examples, despite being grounded in the same principles, sometimes look quite different depending on the specific setting.