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A new article posted on The Pew Charitable Trusts website highlights seven states taking the lead in systemwide, multicomponent, juvenile justice reform as part of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project. In the article, Project Director Jake Horowitz describes his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about policy reform in the first six states to join the project—Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Utah also recently passed comprehensive reform under this initiative. The states’ reforms aim to lower juvenile incarceration, protect public safety, reduce recidivism, control costs, and reinvest savings into evidence-based programs. With funding from OJJDP, the Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice is currently helping these seven states implement their recently enacted reforms. The states have already reduced the number of youth sent to state custody, closed juvenile correctional facilities, and reinvested nearly $50 million in community-based services.

Read more on PewTrusts.org.

This article is the third in a series exploring how research into adverse childhood experiences – or ACEs – is helping researchers, therapists, parents, educators and the medical community better understand the lasting effects of trauma on mental health:

Prevention is the mantra of modern medicine and public health. Benjamin Franklin said it himself: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Unfortunately, childhood adversities such as abuse and neglect cannot be prevented by vaccinations. As we now know, a large proportion of adults go through adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and can exhibit symptoms such as substance abuse. The symptoms seen in adults can in turn expose the next generation to adverse outcomes – creating a cycle that’s hard to break.

However, we can limit the impact of ACEs on future generations by taking a close look at what we are doing today – not only for our children, but for ourselves, as adults. Therefore, to prevent adversities for children, we must address the healing and recovery of trauma in adults.

The ACE Study, launched in the 1990s, offered a groundbreaking look at how childhood trauma can impact health decades later.

More than two-thirds of the 17,000-plus adults in our study reported at least one ACE, such as divorce, neglect or domestic violence in the household. These adults were at a greater risk for numerous negative health and behavioral outcomes.

When I present this research, I often get questions about the adult survivors. What has helped these adults survive to tell their childhood histories?

The ACE Study was not conceptualized to examine resilience. But I had always been curious about what helped these trauma survivors thrive. I wanted to understand not only what led to their ill health later in life, but what led some of them to report positive health, despite their backgrounds.

In 2013, my colleagues and I published a study examining approximately 5,000 adults from the original ACE study who reported at least one childhood adversity. We focused on strategies that have been proven to promote good health – such as exercise, abstaining from smoking, access to emotional support and completing education at the high school level or higher.

Indeed, each of the factors listed was associated with reports of excellent, very good or good health among adult survivors. Depending on the factor, there was a 30 to 80 percent increased likelhood that the adult would report positive well-being. Survivors who had a college education were 2.1 times more likely to report positive well-being than those with no high school diploma. These findings were after considering their chronic conditions. We also found that the four factors were associated with a lower likelihood to report depressive feelings.

When I repeated this study with a sample population of adult trauma survivors from four states and the District of Columbia, I found nearly identical results.

What’s more, the greater number of health-promoting activities a person participated in, the better their well-being seemed to be. Adult survivors with at least two factors were 1.5 times more likely to report good to excellent health. Those who reported all four factors were 4.3 times more likely to report good to excellent health, compared to those who engaged in none or one, even after considering their chronic conditions.

Read the full article on TheConversation.com.

Hazel Grace Middour, 17, was first hospitalized for suicide ideation when she was in eighth grade, she said. After coming out to her family during her freshman year, the transgender teen said things got complicated at home. “I knew who I was but I was holding back,” Hazel said of not feeling accepted at home. “It took a toll on my emotional and mental state.”

One arrest, 10 hospitalizations, and 25 suicide attempts later, Hazel left home last September. She also withdrew from school and has yet to find a permanent home. Through it all, Hazel also dealt with internal strife prompted by her sexual identity and orientation.

“Gender dysphoria’s a (expletive),” Hazel said.

It wasn’t until December that Hazel found a program she feels would’ve helped her through the rough set of years. Youth Network Out Together, or YNOT, is a program of the Coastal Bend Wellness Foundation. Its goal is to reduce health disparities between LGBTQIA+ youth and their straight counterparts by facilitating a peer support system for LGBTQIA+ youth in the Coastal Bend, as well as connecting them to medical and mental health services.

YNOT will lead the Coastal Bend’s first gay prom for LGBTQIA+ youth June 2 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Corpus Christi. The event, which will be chaperoned by about 15 volunteers, is open to LGBTQIA+ allies and youth ages 13-24. Attendees are encouraged to dress in a way that makes them comfortable — anything from traditional prom formal wear to t-shirts and jeans or even a costume is welcome.

Read more on Caller.com.

Helping kids cope may not be easy, but county officials are hoping the answer is child’s play. “Children have their own language,” said Sarah Holland, peer support specialist at Crossroads Area Veterans Center. Saturday, the Crossroads Area Veterans Center will debut the first session of a new therapy program just for kids, Holland said. Although play therapy, which is free for children and their parents, is currently only open to the children of women who have served in the military or who are spouses or widows to veterans, Holland said the program may expand. “If it’s successful, we can do more,” she said.

Play therapy will be funded by the Veteran’s Mental Health Grant, which funds numerous other services at the Crossroads Area Veterans Center. This year’s $75,000 grant, which ends June 30, provided about $1,000 for one month of play therapy services from Brenda Whitfield, South Texas Christian Ministries. That vastly discounted price was provided by Whitfield as a favor to the veterans center, Holland said. Whitfield will help kids work through their issues by observing them as they play with her collection of age-appropriate toys, Holland said.Because kids can sometimes have difficulty expressing their thoughts and feelings, observing playtime can act as a window into their minds.

Although the center offers a variety of mental health programs, such as equine and yoga therapies, play therapy marks the center’s first program designed specifically for children, Holland said. That approach is about helping not only veterans but also family members who live with and love them, she said. “If the veteran has PTSD, their anger issues roll out, and that affects not only the veteran but also the family,” Holland said. “We just want to care for the whole family unit.”

Read more on VictoriaAdvocate.com.

By the year 2043, the United States will no longer have any majority race or ethnicity, increasingly reflecting a vision of a multicultural society. Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs) are among the fastest-growing racial and ethnic populations in the United States, with families coming from more than 50 countries and speaking over a hundred languages and dialects. As our nation increases in diversity, the specific races and ethnicities of our people will continue to change and deepen in complexity, with a large proportion who are immigrants and refugees from all parts of the world. In all fields, but particularly in public health and medicine, communicating effectively with diverse populations and understanding who they are—their family origins, languages, and cultures—are fundamental to our work. Comprehensive and granular data are the lifeblood of how to understand trends in morbidity and mortality and the curative possibilities of improving the health of our increasingly diverse nation.

This newly created AJPH section on Surveillance and Survey Methods—and specifically the report by Paulose-Ram et al. (p.916 in this issue) about the data on Asian Americans in the 2011 to 2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)—is an important milestone for Asian American and NHPI epidemiologists, researchers, providers, and community leaders who have been calling for improved collection, analysis, and dissemination of data for our communities. We look forward to the publication of more articles that push the methodological envelope, improve understanding about the social determinants of health, liberate public data sets, and inform data-driven public policies for our Asian American and NHPI populations, and for all of our nation’s diverse population.

Read more APHAPublications.org.

Adolescent males of color treated for violent injury and discharged from an urban pediatric emergency department (ED) overwhelmingly identified a need for mental health care, according to research from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)’s Violence Intervention Program (VIP), published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

“We know that it is vitally important to listen to the voices and needs of youth,” said lead study author Rachel Myers, PhD, research scientist at CHOP. “This work highlights how adolescent males receiving care in the ED with what may be physically minor injuries are suffering significant trauma. We also know that with real support, young people are resilient, go back to school, and go on to graduate and pursue their goals.”

The study examined data from 49 adolescent males who were treated at CHOP’s ED between January 2012 and August 2016 after suffering a violence-related injury, typically from peer assaults, and elected to enroll in VIP. Participants, predominantly young men of color between the ages of 12 and 17 years old, identified their needs and goals for recovery at intake and during the course of their participation in case management.

At intake to the CHOP VIP, nearly two-thirds of the adolescents reported significant traumatic stress symptoms. Most (75 percent) of the injuries were non-penetrating.

Nearly 90 percent of participants felt they needed mental health services, including therapy and suicide counseling. More than half (60 percent) said they needed legal help, including obtaining police reports. About half (56 percent) also identified a need for psychosocial support, and said they would attend peer group sessions with other injured youth. Adolescent males treated and discharged from the ED were significantly more likely to identify safety needs, such as addressing peer relationships in school and community, as compared to those admitted to the hospital, who may have experienced more serious injuries.

VIP utilizes resources provided by CHOP’s Violence Prevention Initiative, an evidence-based effort to protect youth from violence and promote healing. Learn more at Chop.edu/violence.

Read more on EurekAlert.org. Read the abstract of the study.