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NHS Highland (Scotland) report on ACEs science (including resilience) and practice

 
In the new report, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience, and Trauma-Informed Care: A Public Health Approach to Understanding and Responding to Adversity, Professor Hugo van Warden, the director of public health for NHS Highland (Scotland), writes: "This report deals with ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’ and chronic exposure to ‘toxic stress’. A key message in this report is that such experiences increase the risk of later development of poor mental health, adverse behavioural responses, and increased risk of a range of physical illnesses, but that caring relationships can buffer these adverse effects and improve resilience."
In this context, caring relationships include systems change. Here's more of van Warden's introduction: 
The evidence provided in this report suggests that we can help each other in the face of the stresses and strains to which we can all be subject. By sharing each other’s burdens and helping each other to bounce back from the knocks that life brings, we can create a society that is more connected and healthy. Many of us also have opportunities to use the evidence provided in this report to enhance the lives of babies, children and young people in our extended families, our community, and in our place of work. 
We are also tasked with listening and responding to the expertise of those with lived experience of adversity. Grassroots expertise needs to underpin the shifts in culture and practice that are required to demonstrate what has been termed ‘ACE Awareness’ or an ‘ACE- Aware Nation’. We have found a grassroots energy and interest that we are keen to facilitate and support. 
I would encourage all of us to think about ways in which we can increasingly develop a ‘trauma informed’ approach to our work, particularly with children and vulnerable people across our communities. I am grateful for the fact that such an approach is well recognized in many schools and mental health services, but there is probably more that we can do to embed these lessons in the way that we all work.
It's a report well worth reading: 

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Last night (Sunday evening 9/9/2018) I attended a dinner/meeting of (Vermont) "Health Care Is A Human Right", in White River Junction, Vt... and an 'ACEs' issue was discussed at the table I sat at.

Jane's note above concerning this initiative in Scotland: "...caring relationships can buffer these adverse effects and improve resilience. ... caring relationships include systems change..." were significant 'ingredients' in this dinner/meeting. Having read Susan Lawrence, M.D.'s book: "Creating A Healing Society:...", I'm inclined to believe we can do so here, in the USA, as well.

A similar event, at this same location (LISTEN's Dinner Hall in WRJct, Vt.), about four years ago, which involved two collaborating acting troops (the "Los Angeles Poverty Department" from California, and Wunderbar-from the Netherlands) did one skit from their play on the American Health Care System (before they put on the Full Play at Dartmouth College's Hopkins Center, later that night), at a LISTEN 'Community ['soup kitchen'] Dinner -where each person dining was availed an opportunity at each dining table to discuss their 'adverse American health care experience' and avail their fellow diners to provide [listening]  'caring relationships', and later, free tickets and transportation to see the full play at Dartmouth College/Hopkins Center.

A follow-up ["Health Care Is A Human Right" campaign] meeting is scheduled for Sunday, January 13th, 2019, at 3:00 p.m., at the Train Station Top Floor, 100 Railroad Row, White River Junction, Vermont.

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