Activists, advocates at White House screen "Resilience", address childhood trauma

Last night, under a full autumn moon and with a light mist in the air, several hundred activists came together for a White House-sponsored evening, “Youth, Trauma and Resilience: Discussion and Film Screening of RESILIENCE.”  Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope is a one-hour documentary that chronicles the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) movement in the U.S. 

With the election outcome undoubtedly on the minds of everyone, Tina Tchen -- assistant to the President, chief of staff to the First Lady and executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls -- placed the work at hand in perspective. Noting that the science is irrefutable, she said that we must change our culture around trauma so that the promise of all children is realized. It was the privilege of the Obama administration to do the work for the last eight years, she said, but noted that it was being done before and will continue in the future in communities across the country.

The tone conveyed by Tchen’s remarks carried through the evening as each speaker focused on how much can be done—and is being done—in schools, jails, healthcare settings, courts, and elsewhere to advocate for trauma-informed polices and programs based on ACEs science.

A panel discussion took place before the screening of Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope that included stars of the ACEs movement, including Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, pediatrician and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness; James Redford, producer and director of Resilience; Dr. Rebecca Epstein, executive director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown Law; and Dr. Steven Marans of Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center; as well high level officials from the US Department of Justice.

Karen Pritzker, who collaborated with Redford on producing Resilience and several other films, including Paper Tigers, welcomed the audience. Redford followed by describing how Pritzker brought the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study to his attention and how he knew that the story was too big for just one film. Thus Paper Tigers and Resilience were created.

The leadership role played by the Obama Administration, especially in the departments of Justice and Education, was featured along with those of states, communities, and the private sector. Karol Mason of the Office of Justice Programs highlighted the Defending Childhood Initiative, designed to address the fact that 60 percent of all children have witnessed and been victims of violence. She mentioned a new initiative, Changing Minds, developed in collaboration with Futures Without Violence, as a resource for people working in the field.

Both Burke Harris and Marans focused on the importance of early intervention to break the cycle caused by ignoring the root causes of problems. Marans said the difficult part is getting the word out about what can and should be done. Epstein highlighted the work being done in partnership with the White House and the National Black Women’s Justice Institute to address issues of race and training of school resource officers. She also sees great potential in the teams from 15 states that participated in the White House conference Trauma-Informed Approaches in School:  Supporting Girls of Color and Rethinking Discipline that took place in September.

Among those savoring the final hours of the day in Washington was a group from Topeka, Kansas, pictured here with the White House in the background (and next to barriers around preparations for the inauguration in January).

Today, Peg McCarthy sent this message to me: “Two years ago teachers reached out to us with concerns about the increasingly severe mental health needs of our students. We are a large urban district, 70% children in poverty. We began training all of our staff on trauma-informed care and the neuro-sequential model. We premiered Redford's Paper Tigers film at an all-staff convocation last year. The event last night provided more validation for the necessity of meeting kids' mental health needs in order to help them learn.”