May 2019

Monica Rhor, USA Today , May 15, 2019. For the first time in a long time, C’alra Bradley felt a glint of hope. It was an unfamiliar feeling for the then-18-year-old whose life had been disrupted and derailed by one roadblock after another. Once an A and B student who loved to read, she was living out of her white 1997 Toyota Avalon, on her own for three years, scrounging to get by. But on July 18, 2016, as she attended one of her first classes at a GED and job training program in Houston,...

Anna Boiko-Weyrauch, NPR , May 26, 2019 Two key ingredients came together for Shannon McCarty to get off drugs in late 2017: connections and timing. "The police showed up because they said they got a call that we were shooting up in the car," Shannon said. Everett police officer, Inci Yarkut walked up to window of the car where Shannon was living. "I explained who I was and what my role in the police department was," Yarkut said, and she gave Shannon a business card. "[I] said, 'Hey, if...

Janyne McConnaughey, Ph.D., retired from a forty-year career in education while healing from the attachment wounding and trauma she experienced as a child. During therapy, she wrote her way to healing and now is redeeming her story by helping others to understand the lifelong effects of childhood trauma and insecure attachment.

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she will post the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Feng JY, Hsieh YP, Hwa HL, Huang CY, Wei HS, Shen AC. Childhood poly-victimization and children's health: A nationally representative study. Child Abuse Negl. 2019...

In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.

Lakeside, Arizona resident Mike had originally heard about the book through the ACEs Connection Daily Digest. He was curious and realized that a community forum was taking place in Santa Fe during his family’s visit to New Mexico’s capital. Slipping away for a few hours to attend the forum, he learned about the tragic death of an eight-year-old named Anna and how it became a catalyst for radically rethinking and reinventing child abuse prevention. There in Santa Fe he heard the authors of...

There is still time to apply for courses in the final two sessions of the 2019 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) . In addition, due to many visa denials for international applicants, we have several partial scholarships still available . SPI 2019 courses offer the skills you need personally and professionally to make your community, organization, and/or the world a better place. Join us for an exciting time of shared learning across national boundaries. All courses available for training...

Amy Gardner, Washington Post , May 24, 2019. Last year, an army of paid workers with stacks of voter registration forms fanned out in Memphis, Nashville and other parts of Tennessee to persuade African Americans to vote. They walked the parking lots of grocery stores and laundromats, stood outside church services, and cajoled revelers on party buses and at nightclubs. By October, the Tennessee Black Voter Project took credit for turning in more than 90,000 voter registration applications —...

Ann Tenbrunsel, Medical Xpress , May 17, 2019. Why don't good people report bad things? By the time the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke in October 2017, my co-authors, McKenzie Rees of Southern Methodist University and Kristina Diekmann of the University of Utah, and I had already been knee-deep in reviewing more than 200 research articles on the topic of sexual harassment for almost two years. Our review eventually would become our paper, "Sexual Harassment in Academia: Ethical Climates and...

Everyone’s brain and emotions get dysregulated sometimes, and almost everyone is able to eventually re-regulate. But if you grew up with abuse, neglect or other trauma during childhood, you may get more dysregulated more often, and have a harder time bouncing back, leaving you with a lack of focus and coordination, overblown (or deadened) emotions, and difficulty connecting and communicating appropriately with others. In this video I talk about what dysregulation feels like — if you know...

Are you ready to lead transformative change for children and families in California? Strategies 2.0, at the Child Abuse Prevention Center in Sacramento CA, is looking for a Senior Training and Technical Assistance Specialist who will help grow knowledge and networks for professionals working with families--through impactful consulting to collaborations and organizations, training to direct-service teams, and regional movement-building among family-building and community-building leaders.

Knowledge regarding the impact of trauma on individual health and behavior has become more mainstream in health care over the last several years. However, the effects of trauma on groups, organizations, and entire systems of care, are not as widely understood. The Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) recently spoke with Sandra Bloom, MD, associate professor of health management and policy at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health and co-founder of the Sanctuary Model , to...