June 2020

By Jim Hickman, California Health Report, June 8, 2020 We need to invest in the safety-net institutions that serve and support our most vulnerable now and during times of crisis. COVID-19 is decimating our fragile, unfunded and outdated safety net, and the vital links between families and their local economic, health and social supports. The pandemic has made “underlying conditions” the new code phrase for the social and health inequities disproportionately impacting black and brown...

By California Children's Trust and California Alliance, June 2020 Our nation is experiencing the rage, grief, fear, and uncertainty of the compounding crises of a global pandemic, economic recession, and response to deeply rooted racial injustice in this country, all of which creates trauma for youth and demands leadership and swift action to strengthen the systems foundational to their healing. While the public narrative has painted COVID-19 as a shared common trauma, the reality is that...

COMMENTARY, JUNE 8, 2020, DEBRA DUARDO Nothing would come as a greater relief than to welcome back more than 2 million students to Los Angeles County schools in coming months. That’s where they belong. But when schools reopen, they will not look the same as they did before the pandemic-required shelter-in-place. Our country was a different place three months ago. Today: Protests over racial injustice have rocked the nation. Interaction with friends, neighbors and family has changed as the...

View job description for the Trauma Transformed Center Director position, and link to an ACEs Connection story about the center's impact.

People are angry. Angry about institutional racism, angry about racial profiling, angry about police brutality, and angry about so many other displays of inequity that are happening in our country. People of color have always been marginalized in our society and people of all colors are finally saying enough is enough.

By Diana Lambert, EdSource, June 8, 2020 California schools will look different when they reopen next year, according to new statewide guidance. Students should expect to wash their hands and have their temperature taken often. They will likely wear masks and only attend classes a few days a week with a small group of classmates. Signs and taped marks on the floor will tell them which direction to walk and where to stand in hallways and in the cafeteria. A 55-page guidance document, “...

By Rachel Velcoff and Steven Adelsheim, Stanford Children's Health, June 8, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the lives of families across the country and left many adults feeling stressed, anxious, and struggling to cope. It has also put the mental health of our youngest and most vulnerable at risk. Now, three months into the pandemic, youth are experiencing further stress and trauma, as our country grapples with another profound crisis: the murder of George Floyd and the...

An open letter to my people who are White and sincerely want to show up in their inter-cultural relationships during this time. SUNSHINE MUSE JUN 9, 2020 10:15AM ET Dear friends who are white and privileged by virtue of that categorization (not necessarily because of wealth, intention or ethnic background), If you are receiving this it’s because we have gone through some beautiful things together and/or we have been a significant support for each other as a friend or colleague. This is...

By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, June 8, 2020 Across the US, two public health crises — one new and one ages old — have merged into a devastating tandem. Systemic racism undergirds COVID-19 health disparities and the plague of police violence, both of which kill Black Americans at disproportionately high rates. As protesters have taken to the streets to march against police brutality and to remember George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black people who have...

By Sonrisa Cooper and Sylvia Chi, Cal Matters, June 4, 2020 The recent tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic and high-profile incidents of police violence against black people have shown us that our country has a deep and visceral need for racial justice. Whether we are talking about a global pandemic, climate change or police brutality, people of color, especially black communities, are always hit first and hardest, and this has to change. We have a collective moral imperative to do better by...

By Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 2020 One result of shelter-in-place orders during the coronavirus pandemic is to confine some household members with others who abuse them. By most indications, domestic violence has become more frequent and more violent. Police chiefs nationwide reported increases of 10% to 30% in domestic assaults in the first two weeks after a national emergency was declared in March, according to a USA Today survey. On April 6, United Nations Secretary...

By Rob Waters, June 4, 2020, California Health Care Foundation. Aida Meza has been working as a promotora de salud, a community health worker, since she moved across the border from Tijuana, Mexico, to the San Diego area 23 years ago. She came to Chula Vista with her husband, an American citizen, so they could send their kids to better schools. “At first I cried every day because I wanted to go back to my home,” she said. Then the principal at her children’s school, Vista Square Elementary,...