February 2017

With the President Trump Reality Show, it’s easy to be distracted by ANGRY ALL-CAPITAL TWEETS or Oval Office tantrums. But resist, and stay focused on matters of life and death. Consider two critical issues: refugees and guns. Trump is going berserk over the former, but wants to ease rules on the latter. So let’s look at the relative risks. In the four decades between 1975 and 2015, terrorists born in the seven nations in Trump’s travel ban killed zero people in America, according to the...

Older adults who live in poor and violent urban neighborhoods are at greater risk for depression , according to a new study. The study, published in the journal Health & Place, showed that older adults who lived in neighborhoods with more homicide and a higher poverty rate experienced more depressive symptoms. In fact, neighborhood homicide rates accounted for almost a third of the effect of neighborhood poverty on older adult depression, according to researchers from the University of...

Poverty takes a toll on human health and especially on children. The American Academy of Pediatrics and Britain’s Child Poverty Action Group, among various groups and scientific studies, long have documented the higher risk of illness, chronic disease and disability among impoverished children, along with lower birth weights and an average life expectancy nearly a decade shorter than children from affluent families. Now add asthma and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder to the long list...

On June 8, the Finger Lakes Times’ “Things You Need to Know Today” column had the following: “For the first time, more than 4 in 10 U.S. women are obese.” Now, due to my years of working in victim services, when I see such a statistic I also naturally think of “1 in 3 women by the time they reach age 18 are victims of sexual abuse or sexual assault.” So it has been my intention ever since to write about these possibly linked topics. At least 8 percent of obese women are survivors of sexual...

It’s first period on a Wednesday, and Alejandra is chewing gum, bouncing her foot, and goofing off with friends in a reading class for students learning English. The teacher—a substitute for the morning—writes vocabulary words on the whiteboard: “improves,” “silence,” “activists.” When she gets to “dangerous,” Alejandra springs to life. “Not safe!” she bursts out. Danger is familiar for Alejandra, who declined to use her real name because she was involved with gangs in her home country of...

Richard Besser, MD, former acting director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and ABC News’ current chief health and medical editor, has been named president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the nation’s largest charitable foundation devoted exclusively to health and health care. Dr. Besser will succeed Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, who has led the $10 billion foundation for the last 14 years. During her tenure, the Foundation has...

As with any remarkable change, the 2016 presidential election, a swirl of intense acrimony that foreshadowed current events, actually produced a couple of major opportunities for the ACEs movement. It stripped away the ragged bandage covering a deep, festering wound of classism, racism, and economic inequality. This wound burst painfully, but it’s now open to the air and sunlight, the first step toward real healing. The second opportunity is how the election and its aftermath are engaging...

Once he learned about the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, Mark Dessauer realized that, for some kids, life was like entering a Tough Mudder endurance run every single day. In those events, competitors face adrenaline-churning situations; they clamber up slippery slopes, dodge electrical wires or wriggle under barbed fencing. “It hit me: those are the conditions of kids who are suffering from ACEs,” Dessauer says. “That’s their race every day.” Dessauer is vice president of...

There has been such a great response to our infographic on the journey to becoming trauma-informed that we wanted to share the Spanish version we created in case, like us, you also provide services in Spanish. We are also working with a printer to make poster-size versions available and will send them to you at cost. (Please contact jletarte@echoparenting.org) Or, please visit our website and download this and our growing collection of infographics for free. A su servicio!

Child abuse survivors are not selfish people. In fact, we have a toxic habit of putting our needs last and the needs of everyone else first. We do this for two reasons. First, not only were we taught to put the needs of others ahead of our own but we quickly discovered making sure our abusers were happy and cared for was a way for these people to leave us alone. Second, if you had a narcissistic parent, you were constantly punished for being “selfish.” Anytime a child puts his or her basic...

On Thursday, the Republican senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska introduced a bill aimed at addressing paid family leave. The Strong Families Act creates a tax incentive—25 percent of what employees are paid during the leave—for businesses to offer two weeks of paid family leave a year. Versions of the bill has been introduced during the past two Congresses: The Strong Families Act is one Fischer introduced in 201 4 , and pushed again in 2015. But the timing and current political climate may be...

Earlier this month, Jonathan Martin jotted off a sad tweet. “I’ve lost count of the number of people who say they’ve had ministry jobs threatened/been fired for speaking out in some way in this season,” the Christian author and speaker wrote. Confirmation rolled in: one story from a church planter in California, another from a former worship leader in Indiana. These are “not people who would historically self-identify as progressives, at all,” Martin told me later. They’re “people who see...