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By MyDzung Chu, 7/7/22, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ Meet MyDzung Chu, our newest faculty member at the Center for Community Engaged Medicine, working alongside the HOPE team! She shares how she first heard about HOPE and the projects she will be working on with the team. Can you tell us about your role at Tufts Medical Center? Hi everyone. I am an environmental and occupational epidemiologist. I am also a first-generation Vietnamese-American woman and a native of...

By Fuschia Sirois, Image: iStock, The Washington Post, July 3, 2022 Do you tend to see the glass as half full, rather than half empty? Are you always looking on the bright side of life? If so, you might be surprised to learn that this tendency could actually be good for your health. A number of studies have shown that optimists enjoy higher levels of well-being, better sleep, lower stress and even better cardiovascular health and immune function. And now, a study links being an optimist to a...

By Trisha Powell Crain, Photo: Laura Bruce, The Hechinger Report, June 29, 2022 A labama schools were just starting a new venture to help students find mental health resources when COVID hit. Mental health service coordinators are now in place in nearly all of Alabama’s 138 school districts; they help smooth the path so more students can find resources. The new role came at a key time, officials say, and will help more communities wrestle with the best way to help more students. “We know...

Deeply rooted shame from childhood adversities can lurk beneath conscious awareness, even after early memories are reworked. New understanding of the brain provides hope for breaking the painful grip of shame that’s imprinted in childhood. Traditional therapeutic strategies might not be the best starting point. This blog introduces the first of several healing strategies.

By John Blake, Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times/Redux, CNN US, July 3, 2022 A White judge tells an interracial couple that "Almighty God" placed the races on different continents because he "did not intend for the races to mix." A US Senator writes a book about the dangers of interracial unions called, " Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization ." A White father is so disgusted after reading a magazine article on interracial marriage that he writes a letter to the editor saying if...

By Maggie Astor, Photo: Ryan David Brown/The New York Times, The New York Times, July 1, 2022 Legislators in Colorado, historically a major coal state, have passed more than 50 climate-related laws since 2019. The liquor store in the farming town of Morris, Minn., cools its beer with solar power. Voters in Athens, Ohio, imposed a carbon fee on themselves. Citizens in Fairfax County, Va., teamed up for a year and a half to produce a 214-page climate action plan . Across the country,...

By Ramon Castaños, Photo: Ramon Castaños, EdSource, July 1, 2022 M y name is Ramon Castaños. I am 24. I am Mexican-American. And I am a third-year journalism student at California State University, Fresno trying to jumpstart my journalism career. All of those things about me are more interesting than the fact that I live with autism. I hate that most people treat me differently when they find out I have autism. I just want to be treated like everyone else. In 2016, I graduated from Sunnyside...

Background checks, absolutely! Assault weapons ban, absolutely! But…violent people have one thing in common. They did not experience parenting behaviors and practices generally recognized as supporting the healthy development of children. This is not to say that everyone who experiences unsupportive and harmful parenting becomes violent. Indeed most do not. But, if we want to put an end to violence, working to improve the overall quality of parenting must be part of the solution.

Peace4Tarpon is a community initiative that began in 2010 making Tarpon Springs the first trauma-informed community in the nation. Through ongoing research, we now know that unaddressed childhood trauma is the root cause of the most challenging issues we face whether in our personal, family, work life or in the larger community. These impacts on mental, emotional and physical health can have a ripple effect which often crosses generations. We also know that trauma knows no boundaries –...

While news of mass shootings, such as the July 4th shooting at an Independence Day Parade in Highland Park, Illinois, dominates media feeds, community gun violence takes more lives and impacts more people in the United States. This week the PACEs Connection podcast History. Culture. Trauma, again focuses on gun violence in America, with a conversation departing from the focus on mass shootings, to instead look at community violence and solutions to community violence with policy analyst and...

My father was diagnosed with terminal cancer right around the start of my senior year of high school. I had also broken up with my "first true love" right around that same time. As you can imagine, my little 17 year old self didn't quite know how to cope with it all . Sure I put on a good front (childhood s*xual abuse had made me a master at pretending)! But as I watched my father wither away and at the same time tried to mend my broken heart, I was a swirly whirly mess of thoughts and...