ACES Response:Prevention and Healing Transformation in Illinois
March 27, 2023
Hosted by Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
My guests, Audrey Stillerman, MD, and Bridget Gavaghan will discuss the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative (the Collaborative) and the Center for Collaborative Study of Trauma, Health Equity, and Neurobiology (THEN). The organizations have been working for over a decade to transform organizations and systems through trauma-informed, resilience-building, and healing-centered policies and practices. A cross-sector movement to prevent trauma and promote thriving across the lifespan, the Collaborative places the impact of childhood experience on wellbeing at the forefront of the equity agenda in Illinois. It leads trainings, advocates for policy change, and translates research for the public, policymakers, and partner organizations. The Collaborative convenes a working group of Chicago hospital representatives championing trauma-informed transformation within their systems. In 2021, the Collaborative released an Action Plan to Address Childhood Adversity in Illinois (“Action Plan”) developed through a multi-sector strategic planning process with leaders and community members across the state. The Collaborative is now leading efforts to implement the Action Plan. THEN is a virtual non-profit of clinicians, educators, researchers, and activists pursuing Health, Equity, and Justice for all. THEN works to transform health care and health professional training. THEN designs and delivers curricula that translate the science connecting life experiences and health into prevention and healing theory and practice, with a particular focus on individual patient care.
Resiliency Within
Monday at 1 PM Pacific Time on VoiceAmerica Health and Wellness Channel
Elaine Miller-Karas will amplify the message of hope, healing and resiliency she has learned from our world community as she has traversed the globe after human made and natural disasters. Hope often springs forth in response to suffering and trauma. Our beliefs and our wellbeing are being challenged during these unprecedented times.
The program Resiliency Within is about cultivating individual and community resiliency. Resiliency is the capacity to lean into our strengths with compassion during the most challenging of times and to remember "what else is true?" about our lived experience.
Her guests are inspiring global leaders actively promoting healing and resiliency from a variety of backgrounds. The goal is to spread wellbeing and give individual and community examples to inspire how wellness skills, including ones based upon neuroscience and the biology of the human nervous system, can be integrated into one's life, family and community during challenging times.
Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW
Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW, has been called an "ambassador of hope" and a "resilience guru." She is an author, advocate, a social worker, a trauma therapist, a co-founder of an international organization, the Trauma Resource Institute and key developer of the Community and Trauma Resiliency Models.
She is the author of “Building Resiliency to Trauma, the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models(r)” (2015). She is committed to bringing accessible and affordable interventions based on neuroscience and the biology of the human nervous system to our world's community. Her models have been introduced to over 102 countries.
Elaine is a recognized international speaker and has presented at the Skoll World Forum at Oxford University and the United Nations. Her book was selected by the United Nations curated on-line library as one of the innovations that can help meet its Sustainable Development Goals.
Elaine feels passionately about the impact of climate change on our world community. She is a founding member of the International Transformational Resilience Coalition, an organization focused on the impact of climate change on mental health. She is dedicated to the world's children and she has worked with collaborators to develop interventions for children, parents and teachers to help reduce the impact of trauma. Consequently, she is a Senior Consultant to Emory University’s SEE Learning program, inspired and launched by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2019.
