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SAN DIEGO – The American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 3 (AAP-CA3 ) together with YMCA of San Diego County , San Diego State University Social Policy Institute and San Diego Accountable Community for Health (SDACH) are joining forces as ACEs Aware grantees to assist San Diego Medi-Cal providers screen and treat Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. The ACEs Aware initiative is a first-of-its-kind effort led by the Office of the California Surgeon General and the...

The 16 Strong Project is dedicated to empowering resilience to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) through educational workshops, school partnerships, and community outreach. 16 Strong strives to continue conversations that help young people recognize and navigate the challenges they are facing as a result of ACEs. We believe that with strong support systems, healthy coping mechanisms and a positive mindset, the negative impacts of ACEs can be mitigated.

"The science of the developing child is clear: Infants and toddlers need loving, stimulating, stable, and secure care environments with limited exposure to adversity. However, to date states have lacked clear guidance on how to effectively promote the environments in which children thrive.’ This Roadmap provides a guide to policies that promote environments where kids can thrive.

Growing up in the Central Valley town of Kerman, population 15,000, wasn’t easy for Michael Piña, who self-identified as queer. Piña, who prefers the pronoun “she,” suffered abuse from family, local youth and a Catholic priest who, at a church retreat, “threw holy water at me, trying to get the devil out of me,” she said. “It caused a lot of emotional trauma.” But in Fresno County, where less than 20% of all residents and less than 10% of Latinx residents have a bachelor’s degree,...

STRIVE (Supportive Trauma Interventions for Educators) FALL 2020 TRAININGS Trauma 101 Workshops for Massachusetts Early Education and Care Saturdays from 9:30-12:30pm September 26th - REGISTER HERE October 3rd - REGISTER HERE October 17th - REGISTER HERE November 7th - REGISTER HERE STRIVE is a collaborative project between Boston Medical Center’s Child Witness to Violence Project and Vital Village Network that aims to help schools and early education systems of care increase their capacity...

Trauma can occur at any age and to anyone. In fact, there is no one alive who will escape having some trauma occur in their lifetime. All of us will experience the death of a loved one, a disappointment from a friend, or perhaps losing a job to layoffs. While these are all valid traumatic events, they are commonplace and are not ordinarily life-long in their toxicity to the lives of those experiencing them.

If you are a coordinator or leader of a trauma-informed community network, you can always reach out to the State Coordinator for the VA TICNs, Melissa McGinn, mmcginn@grscan.com . Melissa is here to offer support and technical assistance for anything related to building and sustaining a TICN, from getting on a call or attending a meeting to connecting you with other network coordinators around the state. Click here for a current list of VA TICNs around the state . Happy Hispanic and Latinx...

Request for Applications: Comprehensive Community Approaches that Address Childhood Trauma to Prevent Substance Misuse With support from the CDC, NACCHO is pleased to announce a funding opportunity for local health departments (LHDs) or other community entities through a Request for Application (RFA) . This opportunity is for the implementation of evidence-based approaches through comprehensive community efforts to prevent and mitigate the harms of Adverse Childhood Experiences and the...

Anxiety is a fact of life. There's much we can do to calm ourselves in the short and long-term. Here are some tips for immediate relief.

By Leigh G. Goetshius, Tyler C. Hein, Sara S. McLanahan, et al., JAMA Network Open, September 23, 2020 Key Points Question Are violence exposure and social deprivation associated with person-specific patterns (heterogeneity) of adolescent resting-state functional connectivity? Findings In this cohort study of 175 adolescents, childhood violence exposure, but not social deprivation, was associated with reduced adolescent resting-state density of the salience and default mode networks. A...

By J. Brian Charles, The Trace, September 24, 2020 On a screen full of faces, the lone black square rang alarm bells for the Philadelphia teacher. The boy on the other side hadn’t turned on his camera and his microphone was muted. According to the rules for remote learning at John B. Stetson Charter School , the student was supposed to keep his laptop camera on during class. The teacher alerted Edwin Desamour, the dean at the middle school. A few days later, during a meeting with the student...

By Marissa Evans, The Atlantic, September 27, 2020 The only constant now is loss. More than 200,000 people are dead from COVID-19. We’ve all lost time, routines, jobs, connections to others. But the grief has not been evenly distributed. Grief in this country has always had an equity problem, and 2020 has only amplified the issue, as Black deaths have come in back-to-back blows, from the coronavirus, police brutality, and the natural deaths of those we look up to most. Each new death, each...