This webinar, hosted by the Institute for Research on Poverty, focused on how individual- and community-level deprivation and chronic, unmitigated stress affects health in different stages of the life course; the impact of perceived discrimination among young adult expectant parents; and the effects of adverse childhood experiences on long-term health outcomes. The webinar was held on June 8, 2016 from 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET.

Early childhood experiences form the foundation of brain architecture and can have lasting positive or negative impacts on learning, behavior, and health. Today’s best programs and practices can help support child development, but many children are still left behind. This report from the Center on the Developing Child considers lessons learned from five decades of program evaluation research, identifies five core principles to inform policymaking and program development, and discusses the importance of investing in research and development to better the lives of America’s children. The core principles identified include building caregiver skills; matching interventions to sources of significant stress; and supporting the health of the mother and child before, during, and after pregnancy.

This May 2016 presentation to Connecticut’s Two-Generational Interagency Workgroup, which supports legislative pilot projects across the state, was provided by Alice M. Forrester, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of the Clifford Beers Clinic in New Haven, CT. She discussed the importance of understanding trauma and its effects on behavior and development when implementing two-generation approaches.

The National Crittenton Foundation, in partnership with Ascend at the Aspen Institute, developed this toolkit to guide use of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) survey in direct service, education, and policy settings. The toolkit is designed to promote healing for individuals impacted by childhood trauma, educate the community about the impact of childhood adversity, and encourage implementation of two-generation policies to prevent ACEs for future generations. Materials provided include a tip sheet, sample protocol, case studies, testimonials, and links to additional resources.

This report from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University focuses on “core capabilities,” including executive function, and how they can be impacted by toxic stress, leading to challenges with life skills such as parenting and workplace effectiveness. The report discusses how environmental triggers can impact ability to use core capabilities to maintain emotional balance, and reviews how and when these skills develop. The report also includes examples of how excessive stress can alter one’s ability to use core capabilities, and how service providers can help clients build missing capabilities.

This study investigated how parents characterize trade-offs associated with food insecurity with regard to parents’ mental health and child well-being. The results, published in the Maternal and Child Health Journal, suggest that parents in food insecure households recognize that trade-offs between food and other basic necessities are associated with their personal stress and poor mental health, which in turn affects their children’s health and development. Partnerships between health care providers, policymakers, and parents are essential to successfully address and prevent the poor child health outcomes of toxic stress associated with food insecurity and poverty.

In recent years, significant focus has been placed on the concept of toxic stress and the impact of adverse experiences in childhood on lifelong health and development. As scientific understanding continues to grow, community leaders are searching for ways to prevent and respond to toxic stress in the lives of young children and their families, in order to achieve healthy development and well-being for all children. Leaders from six communities worked together in 2015 with the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) through the Early Childhood-LINC Learning Lab on Community Approaches to Toxic Stress. The communities learned from each other’s experiences, discussed the challenges and opportunities they face, and generated ideas to improve the response to toxic stress in their own communities and in others. This issue brief presents their experiences and recommendations.

This year’s Brain Awareness Night, hosted in Memphis by the Urban Child Institute and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s Neuroscience Institute, featured speakers Dr. Pat Levitt and Dr. Eraina Schauss. They presented on the topic of childhood resilience, which is defined by the American Psychological Association as the ability to adapt well to adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress. Resilient children can thrive despite being exposed to risk factors such as poverty. Resilience is not a trait an individual is born with, it is a skill that can be developed.

Over half of the 2.3 million inmates in the United States are parents of children under the age of 18. Children with incarcerated parents are more likely to exhibit trauma symptoms than other children, and they are at an increased risk of developing behavior problems, substance abuse, academic difficulties, criminal activity, and physical and mental health conditions. Having regular contact with incarcerated parents through visits, phone calls, and other means of communication is important for family well-being during and following incarceration. This report from the Institute for Research on Poverty highlights research that shows the link between parental incarceration and trauma symptoms can be mediated through quality parental visitation experiences.