Links and documentation to the Spirit and Dust column in Big Horn County News November 5, 2014 include the following:
Video of Felitti on origin of the ACEs study. Dr. Felitti and Dr. Anda from the Center for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Diego were partners in the first ACEs research there more than a decade ago. Dr. Anda was our main consultant at our ACEs interface training in Helena October 23, 2014.
This is Dr. Anda's presentation at National Institute for Safe Families, as keynote speaker, "Adverse Childhood Experiences in our society"
"Childwise Institute what we stand for" Childwise Institute is the organization behind ACEs science information for Montana. Todd Garrison is the director, and organized "Elevate Montana," the ACEs program in Montana. He wants to focus on areas generally last to get useful recent scientific information, like right here in Big Horn County.
ACE research explained well here
Resilience trumps ACEs, website especially for children, with tangible answers to “What can we do?” One important effect from ACEs research changes our responses to difficult encounters with human dysfunction from "What's wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?"
Published on Aug 14, 2013
"Research Panel - Six presentations on research in Adverse Childhood Experiences" at The National Summit on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) held May 13th and 14th 2013 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Speakers listed on this site.
Questions used by Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in Montana in 2011 for adverse childhood experiences. BRFSS also was set up in other states in our region, with ACEs research connections.
Seward Alaska collaboration for health care IHS & FQHC
Series of lectures on ACEs and Oklahoma tribes IHS’ TeleBehavioral Health Center for Excellence
National clearing house for news and information access on ACEs
Dr. Anda and risk factors of high ACEs
THE COLUMN "SPIRIT AND DUST" IN BIG HORN COUNTY NEWS November 4, 2014.
It’s time to make room in my life for new scientific evidence that children don’t “just get over it” after some kinds of adversities happen to them. For that reason I anticipate a temporary respite from writing this column for the Big Horn County News. Two events drive this new awareness and create my need to cut back.
One event was the Crow Day of Prayer October 30. I heard prayers offered in faith God will deliver the Apsáalooke Nation from the growing siege of so many premature and tragic deaths. The other event was the previous weekend. I participated in a training session with “Elevate Montana,” an arm of Childwise Institute in Helena on “Adverse Childhood Experiences," or ACEs.
I have been intrigued with the ACEs research for several months now. It seems right on target with many of our ongoing health-related problems here in Big Horn County. At the Elevate Montana training, we learned about Dr. Snow’s groundbreaking work in battling cholera during London’s 1854 outbreak. There are many similarities between this story and new discoveries about the impacts of child trauma.
Dr. Snow was trying to counter the prevailing view that cholera was caused by bad air (miasma). Public officials believed that the disease was spread through smells from less clean working people who were living together in crowded places. Dr. Snow was convinced that cholera was spread through water. Since people didn’t know about germs and microbes back then, water was seen as clean if it smelled, looked, and tasted good. Snow challenged this belief, citing evidence of 500 deaths that occurred in a few short weeks directly clustered around a public water pump in the Soho district. Officials continued to ignore the role that the city’s system of cesspools, sewage drainage into the river, and contaminated wells played in the outbreak of this deadly disease.
The controversy took a new turn when Reverend Henry Whitehead became involved. His goal was to prove Snow wrong through active investigation. An honest man, he slowly came to respect Dr. Snow’s passionate and accurate research into the problem. What finally convinced him was an interview he did with a mother who lived adjacent to that well. The woman had lost her baby to cholera almost the same day the 1854 outbreak started. She showed the Reverend how she had dumped water from washing her cholera-infected baby's diaper into a cesspool. He saw with his own eyes how that waste water leaked into soil less than a yard from the well. The bricks lining the well were just not tight enough to hold back an unseen tiny seepage of contamination. He then joined Dr. Snow in spreading the word of something deadly in the apparently clean clear water of that well.
Like Dr. Snow and Reverend Whitehead in London, doctors from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and Kaiser Permanente in San Diego have been trying to find underlying causes for glaring health disparities. Doctors decided to go back to early childhood to see whether they could identify the most important precursors of poor health outcomes. They researched childhoods of some 17,000 middle class successful people ages 18 to 85 in San Diego, California beginning in the 1990’s. They found remarkable connections between their stories of childhood trauma and decades-later illnesses, dysfunction, and early death. The science of this study has been shared and research confirmed now in some twenty states. Montana, with our children here ranking 49th of all states in overall health, completed our ACE research (BRFSS) in 2011. Montana’s data was even more robust than the original studies, as it included more than just successful middle class people.
As a result of this comprehensive research, we have good science calling us to work together to reduce the effects of childhood trauma. Informed leaders here and across our state are already beginning to access this science and bring the changes it calls for. It will take all sectors of the community working together to really turn things around. I’m excited to be part of a group who will bring information and support to our local towns (Crow Agency, Lame Deer, Hardin, Pryor) and families in our area.
There are several of us soon to be available in South Central Montana for group presentations. Our schedule will be handled locally by Big Horn County Best Beginnings, call 679-0424. For the state clearinghouse for ACE presentations by others of our group across Montana contact “Elevate Montana” online or by phone at the Childwise Institute in Helena, (855) 513-1177.
