Monthly Archives: June 2012

ACE Study research in top ten for 12 years; domestic violence cost Alberta $600 million in 5 years; MD courts better at safety for DV victims

June 6, 2012 By in ACE Study, Community prevention programs, Solutions Leave a comment

For the 12th year in a row, the first paper published about the CDC’s ACE Study has been on the American Journal of Preventive Medicine‘s top-ten most-read list. The paper jumped onto that list the year in 1999, the year after it was published.

Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults was published in 1998. Its authors: Vincent Felitti, Robert Anda, Dale Nordenberg, David Williamson, Alison Spitz, Valerie Edwards, Mary Koss and James Marks.

The ground-breaking study of 17,000 middle-class, mostly white, educated, employed people found that childhood trauma was very common and revealed a strong link between 10 types of childhood abuse,

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Alanis Morissette on being an “attachment” parent; Docs don’t ask about childhood trauma because no remedy; Australian hospitals misdiagnosing child abuse victims

June 5, 2012 By in ACE Study, Child abuse, Chronic disease 2 Comments

Musician and actress Alanis Morissette weighed in on Huffington Post yesterday about the “attachment parent” frenzy prompted by the Time Magazine cover featuring Jamie Lynn Grumet breastfeeding her three-year-old son. Morissette takes her parenting seriously. “Sign me up to add to the fever-pitched overnight education about attachment parenting,” she writes.

She reviews the important first two stages of a baby’s life: attachment and exploration. During the attachment stage, she says:

The speed with which we can consistently meet our child’s needs for emotional and physical nurturance and sustenance is paramount. He or she learns, through consistent and responsive physical nurturing touch and care, to trust life

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Is too much texting while parenting neglect? Meredith Baxter on domestic violence; Philadelphia getting handle on domestic violence

June 4, 2012 By in Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions Leave a comment

This headline jumped out at me this morning — “Could texting while parenting harm baby’s development?  Oh give me a break….more blame-the-digital-media-for-all-of-our-social-ills junk, I thought. By the end, I was sold. Dr. Neal Halfon, director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, told two stories that made his case. The first began in an airport, where he watched a young middle-class mom interact with a nine-month-old baby on her lap.

The adoring mother engaged the infant in beautifully playful, expressive dance. They modeled textbook interactions so crucial for healthy attachment and emotional development.

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Answering questions about trauma less distressing than waiting in line at a bank

June 1, 2012 By in ACE Study Leave a comment

One of the more interesting background notes to the CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experience Study was that the Institutional Review Board (IRB) responsible for approving this particular research project involving human subjects nearly turned down the ACE Study. Its members thought that people who answered questions about trauma might be triggered and suffer a mental breakdown. They finally agreed to OK the study only on the condition that someone involved wear a pager 24/7 lest a person who answered the 200-question ACE survey become suicidal.

IRBs apparently have been reluctant to approve studies that asked people about trauma and sex, and this has led to delaying or stopping research that could be useful, according to this research overview by Dr. Rick Nauert on PsychCentral.com. This state of affairs led researchers Elizabeth Yeater, Geoffrey Miller, Jenny Rinehart, and Erica Nason at the

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Lincoln High police officer says farewell, notes decrease in police reports as other schools’ increase

June 1, 2012 By in ACE Study, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 1 Comment

Walla Walla Police Sgt. Kevin Braman

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IF YOU’RE AMONG THE MORE THAN 350,000 people (!!) who read the story about how Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, took a different approach to school discipline, with a resulting 85% drop in suspensions, I thought you might be interested in a note that the school’s police officer sent to the staff today, his last day at the school.
Kevin Braman is a police sergeant with the Walla

Roundup: Law enforcement tells Congress: fund early child programs; preventing child abuse requires many approaches; Catholic child-abuse coverup case to jury

June 1, 2012 By in Child abuse, Community prevention programs, Solutions Leave a comment

EIGHTY LAW ENFORCEMENT officials in Montana added their names to the nearly 1500 nationwide who have signed a letter asking Congress to fund home-visitation programs, such as Nurse-Family Partnership, that prevent child abuse, according to a story by Missoulian.com reporter Gwen Florio. She quotes Missoula County Sheriff Carl Ibsen:

“I can think of a number of cases where I am now dealing with the grandchildren of people I started arresting when I was a young cop in 1972. I’m not far away from getting into dealing with their great-grandchildren.”

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