PACEs Connection is an anti-racist organization committed to the pursuit of social justice. In this resource center section, we have curated dozens of resources dedicated to anti-racism. Please join us in intentionally embracing and uplifting people who have historically not had a seat at the table. Together we can create a Path to a Just Society . Anti-racism resources are organized into the following categories: Articles and Guides Individual and Interpersonal Anti-Racist Work...

A five-year-old boy holds up his cat amidst the wreckage of his home in Gaza. | UNICEF/Mohammad Ajjour By United Nations News, UN News, October 31, 2023 UN relief chief Martin Griffiths, who has been visiting Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, spoke to families in Gaza over the phone from east Jerusalem on Tuesday and said that what they have endured since the start of Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ deadly 7 October attacks is “beyond devastating”. “ When an eight-year-old tells...

A girl tries to collect usable belongings amid the wreckage of vehicles after the explosion at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images By Linah Mohammad, National Public Radio (NPR), October 19, 2023 When Fidaa Al-Araj received the pre-recorded message last week telling her to evacuate her home because the area was about to be bombed, she first thought of her children. To her surprise, they had actually beaten her to the street. The day before, an Israeli...

Debris and water damaged furniture on the side of a road in Planada on Feb. 8, 2023. The town was hit by flooding in January after heavy rainstorms rolled through the area. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/Catchlight Local By Nicole Foy, CalMatters, June 15, 2023 [ Ed note: This is my hometown ] How do you put a price tag on a disaster? Researchers at the University of California, Merced attempted to do just that for a small farmworker town in the northern San Joaquin Valley still...

By Markian Hawryluk and Kevin Van Valkenburg, Illustration: ESPN, Kaiser Family Foundation Health News, April 24, 2023 The boxer felt broken. Every day, he was waking up in pain. Some days, it was debilitating headaches. Other times, it was his back. Or his fists. His ribs. His nose. On top of that, he had mood swings. Depression. Anxiety. Mike Lee didn’t regret his career. He had been one of the best professional fighters in the world in his weight class. He’d gone 21-1 professionally and...

By From Child Welfare Information Gateway, Accessed: April 6, 2023 National Child Abuse Prevention Month recognizes the importance of families and communities working together to prevent child abuse and neglect. Prevention services and supports developed by this collaboration can help to protect children and strengthen families. [ Please click here to view resources .]

There aren’t enough therapists to go around—but there are plenty of smartphones. Illustration by David Vanadia By Dhruv Khullar, The New York Times, February 7, 2023 In the nineteen-sixties, Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at M.I.T., created a computer program called Eliza. It was designed to simulate Rogerian therapy, in which the patient directs the conversation and the therapist often repeats her language back to her: U ser : My boyfriend made me come here. E liza : Your boyfriend...

By Caitlin Gilbert, Image: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, February 28, 2023 Do brains peak in childhood? Is it all downhill after 30? Can a 65-year-old brain keep up with an adolescent? While growth charts tracking metrics like height and weight give a relatively clear picture of the range of human physical development, less has been known about the key milestones of normal brain aging. To find out more, an international team of researchers collected brain scan data...

By Gretchen Kell, Greater Good Magazine, February 17, 2023 There’s a resurgence in psychedelics, banned in the U.S. since 1970 by the federal Controlled Substances Act. That law, signed by then-President Richard Nixon, halted what had been promising research into the drugs’ therapeutic and medicinal potential. Today, psychedelics have been shown in recent, approved clinical trials to alleviate mental distress, even addiction. As a result, efforts to legalize their use also are on the rise.

By Melissa Whippo, Illustration: Celia Jacobs/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, February 8, 2023 “All of my mom friends are microdosing mushrooms, and I want to try it, too,” one of my patients said during our therapy session. A 34-year-old woman with two children under age 4, my patient lives in the Bay Area — home to one of the epicenters of what is known as the “ psychedelic renaissance ,” making it more common for moms to discuss microdosing at play dates. As a therapist who...

By Antonia Hitchens, Illustration: João Fazenda, The New Yorker, February 20, 2023 Late last month, the Biden Administration announced that the U.S. would send thirty-one M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Meanwhile, in New York, a Ukrainian delegation, including a representative of the Territorial Defense Forces, had gathered to consider other types of aid. The goal, according to an ad for the event, was to promote “the psychological and spiritual resilience of Ukrainian people living in trauma,...

By Laura Newberry, Illustration: Patrick Hruby/Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2023 Post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the most common mental health conditions in the world, with an estimated six out of every 100 people in the United States alone experiencing PTSD at some point in their lives — a figure that doesn’t account for people who live with complex trauma . Yet despite its pervasiveness, available treatments for PTSD don’t work for at least a third of people...

By Lexi Pandell, Illustration: Marcos Chin, UCSF Magazine, Winter 2023 When Tom Solis, a renowned chef and baker, fell ill with AIDS in the 1990s, he believed he would soon die. But breakthrough drugs called protease inhibitors quickly put him back on a path to a fairly normal life. Still, he struggled for years with the challenges of managing his disease and the deaths of loved ones in his community. “I felt I always had this tight armor that I could not get out of,” he says. Then, in 2016,...