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California’s new surgeon general changed the way we understand childhood trauma [qz.com]

 

When  @Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician recently appointed to serve as California’s first ever surgeon general, talks about her work, she invariably brings up Diego.

Diego was a 7-year-old patient who came to her clinic because he had stopped growing. He also had asthma, eczema, and behavior problems. When Harris sat down with Diego to discuss his medical history, she found out that he had been sexually assaulted as a 4-year-old. That’s when it all clicked for her. Years of treating underprivileged kids in Bayview-Hunters Point, one of San Francisco’s poorest neighborhoods, had shown her that the kids with the most severe history of trauma often exhibited the worst symptoms.

That realization would lead her to change the way she treated patients—and to become one of the chief advocates in the US medical community about how screening kids for early adversity can help them become healthier adults.

[For more on this story by Annabelle Timsit, go to https://qz.com/1530399/nadine-...nd-childhood-trauma/]

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