California unveils ACEs Aware initiative to screen for trauma

Laurie Udesky, ACEs Connection Staff

Will screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in California be mandatory? No, but it’s recommended.

Will there be training for physicians and staff on how to screen? Yes.

Who will be reimbursed for screening patients in California? Physicians who serve patients in the state’s Medi-Cal program — for now.

For more answers to these and other questions that surfaced during a Dec. 4 webinar introducing Californians to a new statewide initiative, read on.

Come January 1, California will become one of the first states in the country to reimburse doctors to screen their patients for adverse childhood experiences. In preparation for this sea change, California’s Surgeon General, pediatrician Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, and the Department of Health Care Services Medical Director Dr. Karen Mark unveiled the state’s newly-launched ACEs Aware initiative, and laid the groundwork for why this new recommendation is a call to action…

Lesson learned integrating ACEs science into health clinics: Staff first, THEN patients

Laurie Udesky, ACEs Connection Staff

Nearly two years ago, a team of colleagues at LifeLong Medical Clinics jumped at the opportunity to integrate practices based on ACEs science to prevent and heal trauma in their patients when it joined a two-year learning collaborative known as the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative  (RBC). RBC began in 2018 and includes seven safety net organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Here’s a link to a report about the RBC.)

To join the RBC, LifeLong Clinics — which has  14 primary care clinics in Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin Counties — and the other collaborative teams had to agree to introduce all staff members to ACEs science and trauma-informed practices. LifeLong went full steam ahead with a 2.5-hour introductory training for more than 100 employees who work at its clinics that serve pediatric patients. Trauma Transformed, a program of the East Bay Agency for Children in Oakland, CA, did the training in October and November 2018…

4CA 2019 Year in Review - CA children’s state policy advances

Kelly Hardy

On behalf of the CA Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) backbone team (Center for Youth Wellness, Children Now and ACEs Connection), we want to give a hearty thank you to the advocates and champions across the state for advancing child-friendly policy and legislation in California in 2019.  Here are some examples of what was accomplished this year…

Rafael Maravilla:

Lisa Frederiksen: Substance Use Disorder and Brain Development

Heidi Brown: An Alternative to Suspension with Trauma-Informed Dynamic Mindfulness: Building Stress Resilience, Emotion Regulation and Empathy

Mai Le: Children with special health care needs are more likely to have adverse childhood experiences

Elena Costa: Opportunity to Attend the California Work & Family Coalition Annual Statewide Meeting

Ariane Marie-Mitchell: Updated scoring guide for the Whole Child Assessment