This article needs to be updated.(March 2019) |
Surgeon General of the State of California | |
---|---|
Reports to | Governor of California |
Appointer | The Governor |
Formation | January 7, 2019 |
First holder | Dr. Nadine Burke Harris |
Salary | $200,000 |
The Surgeon General of California is the leading spokesperson on matters of public health within the State of California. The Surgeon General is one of only five State Surgeons General in the United States. The office was created on January 7, 2019, by Governor Gavin Newsom [1] and requires confirmation from the California State Senate. [2]
The first Surgeon General was Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who served from February 11, 2019, to February 11, 2022. [3] [4] [5] The Surgeon General is one key component of the Governor's "California for All" agenda which includes a proposed $1.7 billion in funding for expanded early childhood education and early interventions. Governor Newsom appointed two National Experts in Child Development to be Key Leaders in the effort to help the youngest Californians. [6]
On August 25, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Dr. Diana Ramos as the California Surgeon General. [7]
The Surgeon General of California was created with the signing of Executive Order N-02-19 [14] —one of the first acts taken by Governor Gavin Newsom on his first day in office—on January 7, 2019. At the time of the office's creation, the Office of the Surgeon General was the first of its kind in California and one of only four on a state level in the United States.
On January 21, 2019, Governor Newsom appointed Dr. Nadine Burke Harris to be California's first-ever surgeon general. She took office on February 11, 2019, and resigned her position on February 11, 2022. [5] Shortly after the new Surgeon General was appointed, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris went on a Statewide Listening Tour. [15]
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris has given many speeches and testimony to the impact of Toxic Stress on Children and how it impacts their future.
A PBS NewsHour opinion piece highlighted Nadine Burke Harris experience with Toxic Stress and how it is under-diagnosed in children.
A DISTURBING Washington Post video with Nadine Burke Harris explains Toxic Stress with powerful visuals and sound added to Dr. Burke Harris' explanation.
There are many websites and toolkits to better understand Toxic Stress and Adverse Childhood Experiences and their impact on health over a lifetime including ACES Too High, Harvard Center on the Developing Child,
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris has given multiple talks and had conversations [17] that have been made public and available to the public on Toxic Stress including a famous Ted Talk [18] that addresses Toxic Stress from a Public Health standpoint.
Necessary resources for medical, behavioral and educational professionals include resources to provide trauma-informed care. [19] Systems that work with children and their parents and extended families will need to create trauma-snformed systems where the children and their families are supported by staff who are also supported while caring for survivors of trauma. [20]
A service system with a trauma-informed perspective is one in which agencies, programs, and service providers:
These activities are rooted in an understanding that trauma-informed agencies, programs, and service providers:
Children who come to the attention of the juvenile justice system [21] are a challenging and under-served population, with high rates of exposure to trauma.
Unaccompanied Migrant Children who may have Complex trauma [22] prior to encounters with systems like Border Patrol or the Foster Care system.
In a Q&A Dr. Burke Harris was asked, "Gov. Newsom has made funding early education one of his highest priorities. How do you plan on incorporating trauma-informed teaching into the overall effort?"
In response she answered, "We’re understanding more than we ever had before the role of experience and environment in early childhood in shaping lifelong health outcomes. That is the data and research we are seeing across the board. So, when you look at something that is such a huge public health issue then we must recognize that to implement public health solutions we need to be engaging across sectors.
So, in our educational system, in our health system, in our justice system — across the board — we need to have broad-scale and coordinated efforts to address the impact of early adversity on health and development. Healthcare and early education go hand-in-hand." [23]
"Imagine identifying a toxin so potent it could rewire a child’s brain and erode his immune system. A substance that, in high doses, tripled the risk of heart disease and lung cancer and reduced life expectancy by 20 years.
And then realizing that tens of millions of American children had been exposed.
Nadine Burke Harris, is a leading voice in a movement trying to transform our understanding of how the traumatic experiences that affect children, can trigger serious physical and mental illness, and looking at it using epidemiology, like John Snow did in 1800s London.
Decades of research that has found that children who endure sustained stresses in their day-to-day lives undergo biochemical changes to their brains and bodies that can dramatically increase their risk of developing serious health problems, including heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, and depression." [24]
# | Name | Service | Prior offices |
---|---|---|---|
1 | February 11, 2019 – February 11, 2022 | none | |
2 | Diana Ramos |
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a person's life or well-being. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event. Young children are less likely to show distress, but instead may express their memories through play. A person with PTSD is at a higher risk of suicide and intentional self-harm.
In medicine, traumatology is the study of wounds and injuries caused by accidents or violence to a person, and the surgical therapy and repair of the damage. Traumatology is a branch of medicine. It is often considered a subset of surgery and in countries without the specialty of trauma surgery it is most often a sub-specialty to orthopedic surgery. Traumatology may also be known as accident surgery.
Physical abuse is any intentional act causing injury, trauma, bodily harm or other physical suffering to another person or animal by way of bodily contact. Physical abuse is a type of abuse that involves physical violence, such as hitting, kicking, pushing, biting, choking, throwing objects, and using weapons. Physical abuse also includes using restraints or confinement, such as tying someone up, locking them in a room, or restraining them with drugs or alcohol. Physical abuse can also include withholding basic needs, such as food, clothing, or medical care. In addition to the physical injuries caused by physical abuse, it can also lead to psychological trauma, such as fear, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Physical abuse can occur in any relationship, including those between family members, partners, and caregivers. It can also occur in institutional settings, such as nursing homes, schools, and prisons. Physical abuse can have long-term physical, psychological, and social consequences, and can even be fatal.
Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events that are outside the normal range of human experiences, such as experiencing violence, rape, or a terrorist attack. The event must be understood by the affected person as directly threatening the affected person or their loved ones with death, severe bodily injury, or sexual violence; indirect exposure, such as from watching television news, may be extremely distressing and can produce an involuntary and possibly overwhelming physiological stress response, but does not produce trauma per se.
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a stress-related mental disorder generally occurring in response to complex traumas, i.e. commonly prolonged or repetitive exposures to a series of traumatic events, within which individuals perceive little or no chance to escape.
The social determinants of health (SDOH) are the economic and social conditions that influence individual and group differences in health status. They are the health promoting factors found in one's living and working conditions, rather than individual risk factors that influence the risk for a disease, or vulnerability to disease or injury. The distributions of social determinants are often shaped by public policies that reflect prevailing political ideologies of the area.
Dominic Cappello is a strategist, writer, designer, and educator. He is the creator of the Ten Talks book series published by Hyperion in 2000 and 2001. Ten Talks received national attention when Oprah Winfrey created a show around the book on sex and character in October 2000, featuring parents who had used the books' approaches to family communication.
The Madigan Army Medical Center, located on Joint Base Lewis-McChord just outside Lakewood, Washington, is a key component of the Madigan Healthcare System and one of the largest military hospitals on the West Coast of the United States.
Childhood trauma is often described as serious adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Children may go through a range of experiences that classify as psychological trauma; these might include neglect, abandonment, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse, witnessing abuse of a sibling or parent, or having a mentally ill parent. These events have profound psychological, physiological, and sociological impacts and can have negative, lasting effects on health and well-being such as unsocial behaviors, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and sleep disturbances. Similarly, children whose mothers have experienced traumatic or stressful events during pregnancy have an increased risk of mental health disorders and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
The Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), is one of six Bureaus within the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services located in Rockville, Maryland.
Early childhood is a critical period in a child's life that includes ages from conception to five years old. Psychological stress is an inevitable part of life. Human beings can experience stress from an early age. Although stress is a factor for the average human being, it can be a positive or negative molding aspect in a young child's life.
Transgenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. The primary modes of transmission are the uterine environment during pregnancy causing epigenetic changes in the developing embryo, and the shared family environment of the infant causing psychological, behavioral and social changes in the individual. The term intergenerational transmission refers to instances whereby the traumatic effects are passed down from the directly traumatized generation [F0] to their offspring [F1], and transgenerational transmission is when the offspring [F1] then pass the effects down to descendants who have not been exposed to the initial traumatic event - at least the grandchildren [F2] of the original sufferer for males, and their great-grandchildren [F3] for females.
Donald Jay Cohen was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and director of the Yale Child Study Center and the Sterling Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. According to the New York Times, he was "known for his scientific work, including fundamental contributions to the understanding of autism, Tourette's syndrome and other illnesses, and for his leadership in bringing together the biological and the psychological approaches to understanding psychiatric disorders in childhood"; his work "reshaped the field of child psychiatry". He was also known as an advocate for social policy, and for his work to promote the interests of children exposed to violence and trauma.
Nadine Burke Harris is a Canadian-American pediatrician who was the Surgeon General of California between 2019 and 2022; she is the first person appointed to that position. She is known for linking adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress with harmful effects to health later in life. Hailed as a pioneer in the treatment of toxic stress, she is an advisory council member for the Clinton Foundation's "Too Small to Fail" campaign, and the founder and former chief executive officer of the Center for Youth Wellness. Her work was also featured in Paul Tough's book How Children Succeed.
Conflicts and emergencies around the world pose detrimental risks to the health, safety, and well-being of children. There are many different kinds of conflicts and emergencies, for example, violence, armed conflicts, war, and natural disasters. Some 13 million children are displaced by armed conflicts and violence around the world. Where violent conflicts are the norm, the lives of young children are significantly disrupted and their families have great difficulty in offering the sensitive and consistent care that young children need for their healthy development. One impact is the high rates of PTSD seen in children living with natural disasters or chronic conflict.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include childhood emotional, physical, or sexual abuse and household dysfunction during childhood. The categories are verbal abuse, physical abuse, contact sexual abuse, a battered mother, household substance abuse, household mental illness, incarcerated household members, and parental separation or divorce. The experiences chosen were based upon prior research that has shown to them to have significant negative health or social implications, and for which substantial efforts are being made in the public and private sector to reduce their frequency of occurrence. Scientific evidence is mounting that such adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have a profound long-term effect on health. Research shows that exposure to abuse and to serious forms of family dysfunction in the childhood family environment are likely to activate the stress response, thus potentially disrupting the developing nervous, immune, and metabolic systems of children. ACEs are associated with lifelong physical and mental health problems that emerge in adolescence and persist into adulthood, including cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, autoimmune diseases, substance abuse, and depression.
Out-of-home placements are an alternative form of care when children must be removed from their homes. Children who are placed out of the home differ in the types and severity of maltreatment experienced compared to children who remain in the home. One-half to two-thirds of youth have experienced a traumatic event leading to increased awareness and growing literature on the impact of trauma on youth. The most common reasons for out-of-home placements are due to physical or sexual abuse, violence, and neglect. Youth who are at risk in their own homes for abuse, neglect, or maltreatment, as well as youth with severe emotional and behavior issues, are placed out of the home with extended family and friends, foster care, or in residential facilities. Out-of-home placements aim to provide children with safety and stability. This temporary, safe environment allows youth to have their physical, mental, moral, and social needs met. However, these youth are in a vulnerable position for experiencing repeated abuse and neglect.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are identified as serious and traumatizing experiences, such as abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, substance use, and other harmful events or situations that occur within a child's household or environment. Unfortunately, exposure to ACEs within the child's community is all too common in low-income households and neighborhoods, with close to 43% of children in the United States (U.S.) living in low-income families. ACEs were first identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente's Adverse Childhood Experiences Study conducted from 1995 to 1997, where ACEs were examined and correlated with later-life well-being. With one in four children experiencing or witnessing a potentially traumatic event, children who grow up in an unsafe environment are at risk for developing adverse health outcomes, affecting brain development, immune systems, and regulatory systems.
Katherine Ortega Courtney is an American psychologist and author who co-developed the 100% Community model, a theoretical framework designed to guide the state and local work of preventing two interrelated public health and education challenges: adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and adverse social determinants of health (SDH). As bureau chief of New Mexico's Child Protective Services Research, Assessment, and Data Bureau and developer of a data-scholars program for child welfare managers across the nation, she saw firsthand child welfare's lack of capacity to implement a data-driven strategy to prevent maltreatment by ensuring families had access to the vital services of medical care, mental health care, food security programs, and safe housing.
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