August 2019

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, August 7, 2019 To advance equitable and inclusive policies, we need greater diversity in policy and law research. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Policies for Action program is launching a new funding and mentorship opportunity for early-career policy researchers. We seek historically underrepresented, post-doctoral scholars to study existing policies and law reform so everyone may have a fair and just opportunity to live their healthiest life. [ Please click...

By Monica Humphries, Nationswell, August 14, 2019 IT’S GOING TO TAKE MORE THAN JUST A BAN ON LUNCH SHAMING. AS SCHOOLS STRUGGLE TO FEED CHILDREN WITHOUT PLUMMETING INTO DEBT, LEGISLATORS AND ORGANIZATIONS ARE LOOKING AT SOLUTIONS. Stephanie Woodard still remembers the weight of a roll of pennies in her pocket, hoping it would be enough to pay for lunch. The professional learning specialist for Fort Bend International School District recalls sneaking into her father’s bedroom and digging...

Cissy's Note: I work with people who challenge systems and policies, who reform or start non-profits, and who see hope and promise where others see despair or destruction. While some folks shake their heads or shrug indifferently in the face of injustice and suffering, others organize, mobilize, and channel their time and energy towards making a change. Maybe a physician hosts an annual conference bringing trauma-informed approaches to medical practice. Perhaps a woman shares ACEs 101...

By Elizabeth Lawrence and Elinor Aspegren, USA Today, August 14, 2019 Revelle Mast wanted to be an architect when she was a kid. She changed course in high school, deciding to pursue chemical engineering to address the threat of climate change. But, last year, she made another life decision: to go into politics. “I realized about a year ago that was not feasible on the time scale that climate change is happening,” Mast said. “Nine months ago, I quit my engineering job and went full time into...

By Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, August 12, 2019 Sixteen years ago, in 2003, the student newspaper at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black institution in Tallahassee, published a lively column about white people. “I don’t hate whites,” the author, a senior named Ibram Rogers, wrote. “How can you hate a group of people for being who they are?” He explained that “Europeans” had been “socialized to be aggressive people,” and “raised to be racist.” His theory was...

By Alex Leeds Matthews, Center for Health Journalism, August 13, 2019 When reporters talk about socioeconomic status, it’s rarely defined. Usually, we’re thinking of a broad category of measures related to this nebulous idea: income, education, percent of federal poverty level, housing status and others. But all these little pieces that we stitch together into the broader notion of socioeconomic status are not equivalent. For example, while there is a relationship between income and...

By Jeneen Interlandi, The New York Times, August 14, 2019 The smallpox virus hopscotched across the post-Civil War South, invading the makeshift camps where many thousands of newly freed African-Americans had taken refuge but leaving surrounding white communities comparatively unscathed. This pattern of affliction was no mystery: In the late 1860s, doctors had yet to discover viruses, but they knew that poor nutrition made people more susceptible to illness and that poor sanitation...

September 23rd- 26th, Community Resilience Initiative (CRI) will be holding a trauma-informed boot camp , in which participants can spend an exciting week learning our Course 1, Course 2, and/or Course 3 information. Many of you have already attended Course 1 and 2, and are eager to learn more strategies. Course 3 describes training on topics that teach the knowledge and skills required by individuals who have more regular and intense contact with individuals who may be adversely affected by...

It was an absolute pleasure to engage in a soulful conversation with Karen Salmansohn to discuss her upcoming book, Instant Calm: 2-Minute Meditations to Create a Lifetime of Happy; her personal story of triumph; the philosophies of Aristotle (along with other fascinating letter-A subjects from Encyclopedia Britannica); and much more.

Intact America announces the launch of AdverseChildhoodExperiences.net , a new website designed to encourage researchers and public health agencies to include child genital cutting in the standard ACEs questionnaire. Together with the simultaneous release of an auto-scoring ACEs quiz mobile app (in Android and iOS ), this new tool expands resources available for practitioners who treat victims of childhood trauma. This initiative was inspired when Dan Bollinger, an independent men’s issues...

The traumatized child will present extreme problem symptoms (i.e., self-harm, depression, aggression, suicidal thoughts, etc.) when they first enter treatment. Without specialized tools, the therapist will often only treat the child’s symptoms (the weeds) and not impact the underlying causes or undercurrents (the roots) of the trauma. When this happens, relapse in trauma treatment is high. In response, the FST| Family Systems Trauma Model uses the techniques of feedback loops to help your...

By Jenn Jacome, Hello Woodlands, August 12, 2019 Nearly two years after the historic rainfall and flooding of Hurricane Harvey, Texas Children’s Harvey Resiliency and Recovery Program is assessing and treating more children than it did in the six to eight months immediately following the storm. “Currently, we’re seeing about 250 kids per month in our Trauma and Grief Center overall when you look at new assessments and those coming in for return appointments, and many of these children were...