PACEs Science Champions

Vitamin B-12 (cobalamin), is essentially used to treat healthy red blood cell formation, increase metabolism and energy, improve cognition, and assist in the proper breakdown of nutrients in foods (Mayo Clinic 2024). There are several foods that contain this essential vitamin to promote wellness. These include foods that are rich in protein, such as meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, fruit, fiber rich cereals, and dairy products such as milk, butter, cheese, and yogurt. B-12 is a supplement that...

Dawn Cady is a Success Guide, Intuitive, Certified Holistic Therapist, Owner and Founder of Alleviate Pain. Dawn was a chronic pain sufferer for 31 years and used to take 13 painkillers a day. She learned how to walk again even though doctors told her she would be disabled for the rest of her life.

Some may recall the struggle of getting adjusted to the busy schedule of being a parent and returning your child back to school following the holiday season. I have completed a review that will allow both children and families to have a much more successful transition back into the workplace and classroom setting. Here are a few tips that will make the transition more smoother. 1. Ensure to keep a consistent bedtime schedule. While this may be difficult, it is important to stick as close as...

Join the Conversation! Are you looking to connect to others in the PACEs movement? PACEs Connection’s Growing Resilient Communities invites you to connect, collaborate, and learn about the remarkable work happening across the globe by joining the conversation in our private social media group, “Worldwide PACEs Movement Champions,” on Facebook! Do you want to share an event, success, or story? You may continue to utilize the PACEs Connection website; however, our group will provide a space to...

Longtime donor to and friend of PACEs Connection, Chris Freeze, who is also a former FBI Special Agent-in-Charge and current Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma, needs our help to complete an online survey on employee perceptions of leadership, hope, and well-being. The survey is designed to identify ways in which leaders can help improve the well-being of employee s by reducing burnout and increasing job satisfaction . According to Freeze, who is studying under Chan Hellman, PhD,...

“The way we show up among our peers, in our communities, and in our societies will either foster a culture of belonging or it won’t. Avoidance, apathy, gaslighting, and disconnection may have gotten us where we are now, but they won’t get us where we’re going,” says PACEs Connection’s newest staff member, Kahshanna Evans, as she begins her role in helping people who want to start or revitalize PACEs Connection communities learn how to do community development. Evans brings a passion for...

For the past three years, Karen Bacigalupo, as assistant principal at Fall-Hamilton Elementary, part of the Metro Nashville Public Schools, worked with former principal Mathew Portell to integrate PACEs into their school. Bacigalupo took over as principal last March when Portell joined PACEs Connection as director of communities. Although she had heard about the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences through social media and in her research over the past six years, it was only...

Even though Clay Walker, director of Caddo Parish Juvenile Services in Louisiana, had attended several conferences about adolescent trauma, the first time he heard about the science of adverse childhood experiences was in 2014. His jaw dropped.

BJ (Betty) Adkins shares her passion for helping communities overcome trauma as coleader of a team that is seeding PACEs throughout Kentucky. Starting with a planning grant from the Foundation for Healthy Kentucky in 2012, her team of community stakeholders initiated the Bounce Coalition . Bounce reaches educators, administrators, service providers, and parents throughout Kentucky counties who are adopting the Bounce trauma-informed model. More than 16,000 people have been trained in ACEs...

Judge Sheila Calloway says she had “absolutely no idea that I wanted to become a lawyer” when she was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. But looking back over her fourth-grade papers, which her mother had proudly saved, she found an essay she wrote in which she said she wanted to be a lawyer and help people. And she has. After stints in the Metro Public Defender’s Office and the Juvenile Court in Metropolitan Nashville & Davidson County, TN, she was elected juvenile court judge in 2014.

Growing up as the eldest daughter in a family of three girls and three boys in Nairobi, Kenya, Becky Ndung’u and all her siblings attended school, which is mandatory for children ages six through 14. Her parents—both farmers and her father also a lifelong government accountant—were committed to providing all their children a good education. Her education began in a public school, followed by a private high school. Our conversation was conducted in English, but Ndung’u is also fluent in her...

It took eight years for Mathew Portell to get an undergraduate degree. Not sure what to major in, the self-described, “free-spirited vagabond” matriculated at more than a handful of colleges and universities throughout the Midwest while working low-paying jobs to support himself. Yet this month, Portell was hired as director of communities for PACEsConnection, where he will help our Growing Resilient Communities and Cooperative of Communities programs find the resources our network provides...