Author Archives: Anndee Hochman

Putting Alaska Native hopes, voices at center of state’s ACEs movement

May 18, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Alaska, Solutions 1 Comment

Lisa Wade is the Health, Education, and Social Services Director, tribal court judge, and elected tribal council member for the Alaska Native Village of Chickaloon.

Before the Alaska Resilience Initiative could push forward on any of its goals—to grow a sustainable statewide network; to educate all Alaskans on brain development, adverse childhood experiences, and resilience-building; and to support organizational, policy and practice change to address trauma—its leaders had to start by listening.

Specifically, they had to listen to Alaska Native people.

Alaska Native people comprise nearly one-fifth of the state’s population, but historically their voices have been largely excluded from decision-making about social services, education and behavioral health.

That’s why Laura Norton-Cruz, program director of the Alaska Resilience Initiative, partnered with First Alaskans Institute and the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council in a May 2016 gathering that put Native perspectives, customs, history and hopes at the center.

That gathering of about 30 people “was setting a tone for the whole state that the voices of Alaska Native people matter in this process,” Norton-Cruz said. The goal was to seek input that could guide the Alaska Resilience Initiative, shape the curriculum for ACE/resilience trainers and frame a more inclusive and equitable approach to the work.

Participants at May 2016 meeting hosted by Alaska Resilience Initiative, First Alaskans Institute, and Native Village of Chickaloon.

The group’s recommendations included specific suggestions for revising the materials currently used for ACE/resilience trainers, emphasizing:

  • Cultural and collective trauma, including ongoing injustices faced by Alaska Native people and others worldwide—for instance, mandatory boarding school attendance and the loss of traditional food sources;
  • Cultural and collective strengths, such as indigenous practices of healing and child-rearing;
  • An understanding that the ACE Study translates and confirms what is ancestral knowledge for Alaska Native and other indigenous people;
  • Basic cultural competence;
  • A focus on cultural humility, partnering and listening.

The group also urged that, whenever possible, resilience initiative leaders invite Alaska Native people to talk about their own experience rather than having others speak for them, that Alaska Natives have opportunities to be co-trainers and that data-gathering include cultural and collective perspectives (for example, “in your household” doesn’t adequately describe the extended-family influence on many Native children).

A State-Wide Initiative

That meeting and its recommendations formed the foundation when, a month later, 80 people from across Alaska, all of them involved in ACEs or resilience work, gathered for the first statewide meeting of the Alaska Resilience Initiative.

Participants included Lisa Wade, a tribal council leader from the Nay’dini’aa Na’/Chickaloon Village Traditional Council, which has adopted a trauma-informed approach to all tribal operations and meetings, and Marcus Wilson, former principal of North Star Elementary School in Anchorage, where test grades rose and playground scuffles diminished after the school launched trauma-informed practices in 2010.

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Greater Kansas City first responders, educators, health care workers, sports & faith community embrace learning about childhood trauma, practicing resilience

April 20, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Resilience, Solutions 1 Comment

In a video on the Resilient KC website, police officer Mikki Cassidy notes that “my regular day is everybody else’s worst day.” Then she describes how mindfulness training has helped her find peace amid the clamor: “This moment, right here, I’m okay.”

Later in the clip, Sonia Warshawski, a Holocaust survivor, recalls being shoved onto a train to Treblinka and, later, losing her mother to the gas chamber. “One of my highest points is when I speak in schools, when students tell me, ‘You changed my life,’” she says.

And Josiah Hoskins, a youth raised in foster care, talks about the mantra that helped him survive: “Even if all you have is yourself, with a wall behind you and the world coming at you, you can make peace with yourself.”

The video concludes with four words—“Stories Matter. What’s yours?”—and an invitation for others to share experiences of adversity and healing.


Awareness on Both Sides of the State Line

The campaign is just one prong of Kansas City’s multi-sector effort to raise awareness about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and build resilience on both sides of the state line. Resilient KC — a partnership between the pre-existing Trauma Matters Kansas City (TMKC) network and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce — has worked to cultivate “ambassadors” who can bring the ACEs message to colleagues, clients and community members in business, the armed services, education, justice and health care.

ACEs are adverse childhood experiences that harm children’s developing brains so profoundly that the effects show up decades later; they cause much of the U.S. and the world’s chronic disease, most mental illness, and are at the root of most violence.

The CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study), a groundbreaking public health study, discovered that childhood trauma leads to the adult onset of chronic diseases, depression and other mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence.

The ACE Study looked at 10 types of childhood trauma: physical, emotional and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; living with a family

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Artists in the ACEs and resilience movement: Creative avenues to change

January 4, 2017 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 1 Comment

 

From "Airings...Voices of our Youth", created by staff from the Bellingham and Mount Baker School Districts (WA), the Whatcom Family and Community Network, faculty at Western Washington University’s Psychology Department and, more than 20 teenagers from the community who have shared their stories (Photo: Angela Kiser and Nolan McNally).

From “Airings…Voices of our Youth”, created by staff from the Bellingham and Mount Baker School Districts (WA), the Whatcom Family and Community Network, faculty at Western Washington University’s Psychology Department and, more than 20 teenagers from the community who have shared their stories (Photo: Angela Kiser and Nolan McNally).

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At a June summit in Whatcom County, WA, titled “Our Resilient Community: A Community Conversation on Resilience and Equity,” the arts played a starring role.

Kristi Slette, executive director of the Whatcom Family and Community Network, one of two Washington sites participating in the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) project, says the arts—music, dance, sculpture, storytelling—can help audiences understand trauma, resilience and hope in a visceral way.

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Business leaders in the ACEs science and resilience movement: A different kind of bottom line

December 1, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Solutions 5 Comments
Vigor Alaska's Ketchikan shipyard at dawn.

Vigor Alaska’s Ketchikan shipyard at dawn.

The owner of the biggest construction firm in Walla Walla, Washington, sat through a seminar that framed adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) science in ways a business person could understand: how childhood trauma could translate into low productivity, high turnover, sinking morale and rising health care costs.

The top cause of on-the-job injury at the construction firm was substance abuse by young male workers. Suddenly, the dots connected. The owner leaned toward Teri Barila, co-founder of the Children’s Resilience Initiative, and said, “Now I know what you’ve been trying to tell us.”

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Teens lead way in teaching Camden, NJ, about ACEs and resilience

September 9, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Resilience, Solutions 4 Comments
Hopeworks teens lead a workshop about ACEs science

Hopeworks teens lead a workshop about ACEs science

 

Two volunteers race against the clock to stack red Solo cups into the highest tower they can manage.

Queenie Smith keeps knocking them down.

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Alberta Family Wellness Initiative changes minds by informing Canadians about effects of toxic stress on kids’ brains

November 4, 2014 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Attachment, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Neurobiology, Solutions

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A cartoon outline of a child – in a video – stands alone near a cracked sidewalk heaped with obstacles: giant red bricks labeled “neglect,” “abuse” and “parental addiction.” The voice-over says: “It’s possible to fix some of the damage of toxic stress later on, but it’s easier, more effective and less expensive to build solid brain architecture in the first place.”

The four-minute animation—which covers toxic stress, caregiver-child interaction and the role of communities in building healthy brains—has reached many people since its release in October 2013. But the video is just one snippet of the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative (AFWI), a project aimed to better the lives of children and families in one of Canada’s westernmost provinces.

Dr. Michelle Gagnon, vice president, Norlien Foundation

Dr. Michelle Gagnon, vice president, Norlien Foundation

The AFWI, launched in 2007 by the private Norlien Foundation, has an ambitious agenda: to promote the use of scientific knowledge about early brain and biological development in order to change beliefs, policies and practices related to children, families and communities—in short, to “bridge the gap between what we know and what we do,” according to a 2013 AFWI report.

The AFWI began its work by capturing the attention and engagement of high-level “change-makers”—government officials, community leaders, policy experts, academics and administrators who could learn the newest science, discuss it in depth, then take that story home to influence research, policy and practice.

“In the early days, the focus of our effort was on policy-makers and professionals rather than the public. You need to start changing the thinking of those in the system who are making decisions before you start focusing on a public audience,” said Dr. Michelle Gagnon, vice president of Norlien.

AFWI focuses on the “core story of brain development,” a series of metaphors grounded in emerging biomedical science and developed with the help of the FrameWorks Institute  and the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University.

  • Brains are not just born; they are built through a child’s experiences and interaction.

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Maine Resilience Building Network changes how people think about childhood trauma

November 2, 2014 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Community prevention programs, Resilience, Solutions, Trauma

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Sue Mackey Andrews will talk to anyone about adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs: Pediatricians. Early childcare workers. Parent advocacy groups. And those on the front lines who work with kids, like the longtime school bus driver from rural Maine, a gruff and taciturn man who insisted, during a half-day school district inservice, that trauma and resilience had nothing to do with his work.

The driver also told Andrews that he would not start the bus each day until he had made eye contact with every single child and greeted him or her by name. And that, Andrews responded, was exactly the relevance of his work to build resilience.

The tagline of the Maine Resilience Building Network (MRBN), which Andrews co-facilitates, is “Join the Conversation.” The

Sue Mackey Andrews, co-facilitator, Maine Resilience Building Network

Sue Mackey Andrews, co-facilitator, Maine Resilience Building Network

group, formed in the spring of 2012, brings together practitioners in medical care, education and behavioral health, along with those working in business, law enforcement, the military, juvenile justice and faith communities.

Since its early meetings, comprising a half-dozen people, all of them doing work based on research into childhood adversity, MRBN has grown to include 77 members, with reach into all of Maine’s 16 counties.

From the beginning, said Andrews and MRBN co-facilitator Leslie Forstadt, associate professor with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the group agreed that the message should focus on wellness and healing rather than illness and trauma.

The word “resilience” had to be part of the name because, said Andrews, “we talk about how it’s never too late to realize your ACEs and, through support and personal discovery, overcome them.” The term “building” captured the sense of a growing effort, and “network” aptly described how individual sites would function autonomously while sharing their innovations, challenges and questions.

The term “ACEs” has its origins in the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. The study revealed a direct link between 10 types of childhood adversity and the adult onset of chronic disease (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, etc.), mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence. It showed that childhood trauma was very common — two-thirds of adults have

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