Category Archives: Community prevention programs

San Diego’s stop-and-go progress to becoming a trauma-informed community

April 3, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Solutions 5 Comments

At Teralta Park, Arturo Soriano (l) with his wife, Gabby, holding baby Joshua, and their kids Daniella (between them) and Adrian (kneeling), spend time with Kenneth (arms folded), Claudia Ruiz and her mother, Michelle Massett. Behind them, Coach, wearing red gloves, comes to the park to spar with the youth.

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It’s a warm spring afternoon and Arturo Soriano is in his old stomping grounds—at Teralta Park, a small urban park atop a sunken freeway in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood. As a teenage gang member in the 1980s, Soriano roamed the park and the surrounding streets before spending the better part of two decades in prison. Now 40, he has returned with a different mission.

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The most important thing I didn’t learn about in medical school: Adverse childhood experiences

January 23, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Chronic disease, Community prevention programs, Solutions 11 Comments
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Dr. Nancy Hardt

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The most important thing I didn’t learn in medical school is about adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACEs.

To be sure, if I had understood them then the way I do now, I would have been a better and more compassionate physician. Importantly, I would have avoided lots of mistakes.

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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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Pueblo, CO, clinic rewrites the book on primary medical care by asking patients about their childhood adversity

December 20, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Community prevention programs, Uncategorized 8 Comments

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In October 2015 in Pueblo, CO, the staff members of a primary care medical clinic – Southern Colorado Family Medicine at the St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center – start asking parents of newborn babies to kids five years old about the parents’ adverse childhood experiences and the resilience factors in their lives. They ask the same questions of pregnant women and their partners in the hospital’s high-risk obstetrics clinic.

The results are so positive after the first year that the clinic starts asking parents of kids up to 18 years old. The plans are to do the same in the hospital’s emergency room.

Why? They think it gives kids a leg up on a healthier start in life. They think it helps adults understand and manage their own health better. They think it helps physicians better understand and help their patients. Oh yeah – and it looks like it’s going to save money. Probably a lot of money.

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We have to partner with law enforcement around trauma

December 13, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 1 Comment
By Kathleen McNamara 

jjie_kathy-mcnamara-2-16-12-13Is there a need for trauma-informed training for police officers? Let me share an example of a situation where the outcome could have been very different if the responding officer had been trauma-informed.

I was working with a young man on probation who was a trauma survivor. He was being tested for drugs, and, unfortunately, the environment triggered a traumatic response. He came running out of the bathroom and I followed him as he wandered around in a highly agitated state. I was able to talk with him and was working on helping him reconnect with his environment.

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Building human resilience for climate change addressed at Washington, DC, conference

December 13, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Resilience, Solutions Leave a comment

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The missing piece in the response to climate disruption—preparing humans to cope with the trauma and toxic stress it causes—was the focus of a recent Conference on Building Human Resilience for Climate Change sponsored by the International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC). About a hundred mental health professionals, emergency response and disaster management officials, and others from education and faith communities gathered in Washington, DC. Continue reading →

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