Author Archives: Jane Ellen Stevens

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s address on removal of four Confederate statues

May 29, 2017 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Uncategorized 1 Comment

This 22 minutes is definitely worth the time. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu eloquently describes why New Orleans removed the statues, which weren’t erected immediately after the Civil War to honor the fighters, but to remind all who passed by the statues about white supremacy.

Here’s the text from the YouTube page on which this video appears:

On Friday, May 19, 2017, Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered an address about the City of New Orleans’ efforts to remove monuments that prominently celebrate the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” The statues were erected decades after the Civil War to celebrate the “Cult of the Lost Cause,” a movement recognized across the South as celebrating and promoting white supremacy.

There are four prominent monuments in question. The Battle of Liberty Place monument was erected by the Crescent City White League to remember the deadly insurrection led by white supremacists against the City’s racially integrated police department and government. The Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway, the P.G.T. Beauregard equestrian statue on Esplanade Avenue at the entrance to City Park, and the Robert E. Lee statue at Lee Circle.

Addiction doc says: It’s not the drugs. It’s the ACEs – adverse childhood experiences.

May 2, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 223 Comments

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He says: Addiction shouldn’t be called “addiction”. It should be called “ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking”.

He says: Ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking (what traditionalists call addiction) is a normal response to the adversity experienced in childhood, just like bleeding is a normal response to being stabbed.

He says: The solution to changing the illegal or unhealthy ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior of opioid addiction is to address a person’s adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) individually and in group therapy; treat people with respect; provide medication assistance in the form of buprenorphine, an opioid used to treat opioid addiction; and help them find a ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior that won’t kill them or put them in jail.

This “he” isn’t some hippy-dippy new age dreamer. He is Dr. Daniel Sumrok, director of the Center for Addiction Sciences at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine. The center is the first to receive the Center of Excellence designation from the Addiction Medicine Foundation, a national organization that accredits physician training in addiction medicine. Sumrok is also one of the first 106 physicians in the U.S. to become board-certified in addiction medicine by the American Board of Medical Specialties.

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England and Wales produce new animation about ACEs & resilience

May 1, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Resilience, Solutions 6 Comments

Here’s a new ACE animation that was posted last week by Dr. Helen Lowey and Prof. Mark A. Bellis at Public Health Wales.

Lowey, consultant in public health, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council in Northwest England, sent this information with the animation:

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are those that directly harm a child; such as physical, verbal and sexual abuse or physical or emotional neglect – as well as those that affect the environment where they grow up; including parental separation, domestic violence, mental illness, alcohol abuse, drug use or incarceration.

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Pediatrician develops whole-child assessment tool that includes ACEs questions

April 30, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 1 Comment

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Over the last dozen years or so, many pediatricians, astounded by the ramifications of the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the children they care for, began integrating this science into their practices. The most common approach has been to ask parents about ACEs using a questionnaire, and to use this information to counsel parents and identify resources for the family. Different practices have been using different questionnaires: Some ask parents for their ACE scores along with their children’s; others also add a resilience survey.

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The practice of ACEs science in the time of Trump

February 20, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Solutions 22 Comments

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As with any remarkable change, the 2016 presidential election, a swirl of intense acrimony that foreshadowed current events, actually produced a couple of major opportunities. It stripped away the ragged bandage covering a deep, festering wound of classism, racism, and economic inequality. This wound burst painfully, but it’s now open to the air and sunlight, the first step toward real healing. The second opportunity is how the election and its aftermath are engaging more Americans from many different walks of life. The election brought out people who hadn’t voted in years; its aftermath has engaged people who’d counted on someone else to do their citizenship work for them. All these people — all of us — now have an opportunity to work together to solve our most intractable problems. That knowledge is embodied in the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

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Just one year of child abuse costs San Francisco, CA, $300 million….but it doesn’t have to

January 12, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Solutions 5 Comments

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In 2015, 5,545 children in San Francisco, CA, were reported to have experienced abuse. Of those, the reports of 753 children were substantiated. The expense to San Francisco for not preventing that abuse will cost $400,533 per child over his or her lifetime. That adds up to $301.6 million for just that one year, according to “The Economics of Child Abuse: A Study of San Francisco.”

And, because child abuse is profoundly underreported, the costs are likely to be as much as $5.6 billion for one year of children experiencing trauma, the report found.

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