AIM Clinical Science Fellow Grantee: Dr. Sylvanna M. Vargas

The Be Body Positive Model for Promoting Positive Embodiment in Youth

Speaker: Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, CEDS-S  |  escottlcsw@gmail.com

In this presentation Elizabeth will present the Be Body Positive model developed in 25 years of school based eating disorders prevention. She will share the messages teachers and parents can promote with their children to support resilience against eating problems and body dissatisfaction and she will describe the exciting initiative that The Body Positive and AIM are building to prevent eating disorders in Monterey County.

Bio: Elizabeth Scott and Connie Sobzak founded The Body Positive in 1996 because of their shared passion to create a lively, healing community that offers freedom from suffocating societal messages that keep people in a perpetual struggle with their bodies.

Elizabeth and Connie have been fortunate to spend time with a widely diverse group of people for more than two decades. Their work is informed by every one of the precious souls who has shared their unique body experience. They have made a commitment to honestly telling their own stories, and offering space for others to do the same without fear of judgment, comparison, or criticism. It is in this type of environment that each one of us can find what we need to become embodied: to tell our own truth and step fully into—and love—our unique selves.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

• 1. Identify social risk factors for developing eating disorders.
  2. Describe the five Be Body Positive Competencies that promote positive embodiment.
  3. Demonstrate an activity to help teens think about beauty in more imaginative ways.

Research Findings from the Pediatric Adverse Childhood Experiences ACEs Study

Speaker: Dayna Long, MD |  Pediatrician  |  Dayna.Long@ucsf.edu

The research team from the 5-year study on Adverse Childhood Experiences will share their findings and methods for using PEARLS Pediatric ACEs and Related Life Events Screener as a tool for recognition, early intervention, and prevention.

Bio: Dr. Dayna Long is a pediatrician with special interests in community health and engagement, and in promoting equity in health care. In her practice, she loves supporting parents and caregivers, and her patients fill her with inspiration and awe. Her goal is to enable all children to be as healthy as possible by eliminating the inequities that lead to poor health outcomes for many families and young children.

Long’s research and advocacy examines ways to make communities healthier, such as shifting traditional health care practices to team-based models focused on prevention.Long earned her medical degree from the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. At UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, she completed a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in infectious diseases. She has additional training in incorporating cultural humility into patient care.

In her free time, Long loves spending time with her three sons. One of the highlights of her career was meeting former President Barack Obama.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

• 1. Learn about the latest research findings from the longitudinal cohort study PEARLS.
  2. Learn about how the findings have been implemented in primary care and pediatric settings in California under the ACEs Aware Initiative
  3. Discuss how the research findings can serve as preliminary data for future research to evaluate the effects of youth interventions on biologic outcomes.

References:

1.Pediatrics ACE and Related Life Events Screener (PEARLS) and Children’s Health in a Pediatric Safety-Net Health System. Neeta Thakur, Danielle Hessler, Kadiatou Koita, Morgan Ye, Mindy Benson, Rachel Gilgoff, Monica Bucci, Dayna Long, Nadine Burke Harris. Child Abuse and Neglect
(DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104685)

2.Koita K, Long D, Hessler D, Benson M, Daley K, Bucci M, et al. (2018) Development and implementation of a pediatric adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and other determinants of health questionnaire in the pediatric medical home: A pilot study. PLoS ONE 13(12): e0208088. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208088

3.Jeung, J., Hessler Jones, D., Frame, L. et al. A Caregiver-Child Intervention for Mitigating Toxic Stress (“The Resiliency Clinic”): A Pilot Study. Matern Child Health J 26, 1959–1966 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-022-03485-4

GoodforMEdia: A Youth-led Peer-Mentoring Program Promoting Healthier Engagement with Social Media

Speaker: Vicki Harrison, MSW |  Program Director for Stanford’s Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing  | vickih@stanford.edu

Discover how a peer-focused, youth-led initiative can support middle-high school student mental health, amplify youth voice, and advocate for mental health and technology reform. Highlighting their #goodforMEdia campaign, youth leaders will discuss social media’s direct impact on their lives and strategies to minimize harm and maximize the benefits.

Bio: Vicki Harrison has over twenty years of experience working within the public health, education and mental health sectors developing innovative, community-based programs at the local, state and national levels. As Program Director for Stanford Psychiatry’s Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing, she implements a broad portfolio of community-based projects promoting wellbeing, early intervention and increased access to mental health services for young people ages 12-25. This includes allcove – a first of its kind integrated youth mental health model in the U.S. and a national Media and Mental Health Initiative, partnering with the media, mental health and technology sectors to enhance the positive impact of media on youth mental health and wellbeing. She also serves as a founding member of the TikTok Content Advisory Council.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Learn how this youth-driven project can be incorporated into mental health support or media literacy curricula
2. Increase awareness of social media’s impacts on youth mental health.

References:

www.goodformedia.org

Dealing with the Double-Whammy — When You and Your Child Both Have ADHD

Speaker: Katherine Ellison |  Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist  |  kathyellison@comcast.net

It’s not quite the blind leading the blind — more often it’s like one scatterbrained hothead losing track of another. As awareness of ADHD continues to increase, millions of parents are realizing they have something fundamental — and frustrating — in common with their kids. Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention,”

Katherine was diagnosed with ADHD at age 48, shortly after her 12-year-old son. She offers tips on how to handle this potentially perilous path and emerge with family relationships and a measure of sanity intact.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1) Describe ADHD and how it manifests in and potentially complicates family life.

2) Give examples of how to avoid the pitfalls of the “ADHD Industrial Complex,” the multitude of supposed “silver bullets” on sale that can cost precious money and time.

3) Describe some of the strategies that worked for Katherine to help her son survive school and bring peace to her family, primarily including mindfulness, education, and compassion.

The Youth Mental Health Imperative: the allcove integrated youth mental health center

Speaker: Steven Adelshiem, MD |  Youth and Adult Psychiatrist  | sadelshe@stanford.edu   | Link to Bio/CV

Steven Adelsheim, MD is a child/adolescent and adult psychiatrist who works to support community behavioral health partnerships locally, regionally, at the state level and nationally. He is the Director of the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Adelsheim has partnered in developing statewide mental health policy and systems, including those focused on school mental health, telebehavioral health, tribal behavioral health programs, and suicide prevention. For many years Dr. Adelsheim has been developing and implementing early detection/intervention programs for young people in school-based and primary care settings, including programs for depression, anxiety, prodromal symptoms of psychosis, and first episodes of psychosis. Dr. Adelsheim is also involved in the implementation of integrated behavioral health care models in primary care settings as well as the use of media to decrease stigma surrounding mental health issues. He is currently leading the US effort to implement the headspace model of mental health early intervention for young people ages 12-25 based in Australia. Dr. Adelsheim also leads the national clinical network for early psychosis programs called PEPPNET.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Participants will name one factor impacting the need for expanded youth mental health supports.
  2. Participants will identify 3 core components of the allcove model.
  3. Participants will identify 3 core aspects of the role of young people in allcove program development and sustainability.

The Who, What, When, Where, How of Medication

Speaker: Shashank Joshi, MD, FAAP, DFAACAP  |  Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Education  |   svjoshi@stanford.edu

Bio: Shashank V. Joshi, MD, FAAP, DFAACAP, is Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Education at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Graduate School of Education (by courtesy), and the Director of School Mental Health at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Professor Joshi is a Faculty Advisor at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), the John Gardner Center for Youth & their Communities in the Graduate School of Education, and the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education (CARE). Among many roles at Stanford, he also serves on the HumBio Curriculum Committee, Advisory Board for Stanford Introductory Studies (SIS), and VPUE Undergraduate Advisory Council. In September 2022, he was appointed to a 3-year term as Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Well-being in the Office of the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education (VPUE).

He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and former Co-chair of the AACAP Committee on Schools. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Project Safety Net Palo Alto, the Advisory Boards of the National Center on School Mental Health (NCSMH) and the Jed Foundation, and a member of the Student Mental Health Policy Workgroup for the State of California. He has been the recipient of numerous awards in teaching and public service, most recently The Polymath Award (2021), given for excellence across multiple mission areas of the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences.

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy Innovation and Mental Health

Speaker: Jennifer Fenton, LMFT  |  jennifer@equinehealing.org

Bio: Jennifer has a history of working with those who are least able to access or afford mental health services and has experience working with at-risk youth, individuals in crisis, and special needs children. She is certified and/or trained in several evidenced based practices such as Motivational Interviewing, Seeking Safety, Aggression Replacement Training, Client Centered Treatment Planning, Hostage Negotiations, Critical Incident Stress Management, and Mindfulness. Jennifer’s passion for helping those in need led her to the concept of forming a non-profit agency that will combine her passion for equines and her mental health experience. Her vision for this non-profit is to continue to treat those in need including; veterans, at-risk youth, special needs children, and many others seeking alternative treatments that promote mental and emotional health.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

• 1. Describe Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP).
  2. Demonstrate EAP’s efficacy as an evidence-based practice.
  3. Compare EAP to other evidence-based therapies.

Mindfulness: Tier One Mental Health Support

Speaker: Laurie Grossman, BA, MBSR  |  lgrossman@innerexplorer.org

Over the last few decades, mindfulness has become a common intervention to address mental health issues for adults and youth outside of school. In this session, attendees will understand why mindfulness should be a part of every school’s curriculum every day of the school year. While poverty and pressure to succeed have always impacted students from different walks of life, Covid, climate change, school violence, and society’s dysfunction have amplified the mental health stakes for all students, teachers and families. In this presentation, attendees will practice mindfulness, learn about the science behind its effectiveness, come to understand why mindfulness should be a school-based tool, and be exposed to Inner Explorer. A non-profit serving 2.2 million preK-12 students across the country, Inner Explorer is a low-hanging fruit that delivers with ease, an effective, daily mindfulness tool, benefitting teachers as much as students in pre K-12 classrooms. When teachers forget to use their program, often their students remind them!

Bio: Laurie Grossman, one of the founders of the mindfulness in education movement, has been an activist since 1975—she believes that mindfulness in schools is the tool most likely to help achieve social justice. Over the last two decades, she started two innovative programs: one that created partnerships between private and public schools, and one that brought mindfulness into schools. In 2007, as part of Park Day School’s Community Outreach Program, she and two colleagues launched a pilot program of mindfulness in an Oakland, CA, elementary school that was covered in The New York Times and on NBC. Grossman is cofounder of Mindful Schools, now one of the largest mindfulness-in-education programs in the world. She currently works with Inner Explorer, an organization focused on bringing daily mindfulness practices into schools to improve educational outcomes and the well-being of children and teachers. She is passionate about Inner Explorer because the organization has made mindfulness scalable, providing easy and immediate access to every K–12 classroom, anywhere, anytime.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

• 1. Demonstrate mindfulness through a variety of exercises to discover its power in calming down the nervous system, creating focus, and reducing stress.
  2. Describe the value of mindfulness practice to benefit clinicans, teachers, and parents as much as youth.
  3. Discuss how mindfulness can be utilized to reduce anxiety and stress around testing, active shooter drills, and bullying.

Research Findings from the Pediatric Adverse Childhood Experiences ACEs Study

Speaker: Monica Bucci, MD |  Physician  | monica@drmonicabucci.com

The research team from the 5-year study on Adverse Childhood Experiences will share their findings and methods for using PEARLS Pediatric ACEs and Related Life Events Screener as a tool for recognition, early intervention, and prevention.

Bio: I am Dr. Monica Bucci, MD, a physician, neuroscientist, author, wife and life enthusiast, deeply passionate about the human brain. I am the Director of Research at the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco and an author of scientific research on how our brain and body respond to stress. Using the science of stress-related growth, I offer a new approach to understanding how life’s stress can activate the brain to adapt to unprecedented change.

Born and raised in Rome, the magnificent capital of Italy, my father taught me to appreciate beauty and art since I was a little girl.

I wanted to know why people who experienced serious life challenges were able not only to survive but to experience profound transformation that surpassed what was present before their struggle. How do these individuals find a way to thrive, often despite physically and mentally traumatic experiences? How do they rebuild a new sense of self after their identity has been shaken at its core?

After earning my medical degree, a dual specialty in Neurology and Radiology in Italy and a fellowship in Neuroradiology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), one of the top medical universities in the world, I landed a position as Faculty Researcher at UCSF.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

• 1. Describe the latest research findings from the longitudinal cohort study PEARLS.
  2. Describe how the findings have been implemented in primary care and pediatric settings in California under the ACEs Aware Initiative
  3. Discuss how the research findings can serve as preliminary data for future research to evaluate the effects of youth interventions on biologic outcomes.

References:

1.Pediatrics ACE and Related Life Events Screener (PEARLS) and Children’s Health in a Pediatric Safety-Net Health System. Neeta Thakur, Danielle Hessler, Kadiatou Koita, Morgan Ye, Mindy Benson, Rachel Gilgoff, Monica Bucci, Dayna Long, Nadine Burke Harris. Child Abuse and Neglect
(DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104685)

2.Koita K, Long D, Hessler D, Benson M, Daley K, Bucci M, et al. (2018) Development and implementation of a pediatric adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and other determinants of health questionnaire in the pediatric medical home: A pilot study. PLoS ONE 13(12): e0208088. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208088

3.Jeung, J., Hessler Jones, D., Frame, L. et al. A Caregiver-Child Intervention for Mitigating Toxic Stress (“The Resiliency Clinic”): A Pilot Study. Matern Child Health J 26, 1959–1966 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-022-03485-4

Giving Kids Permission to  Feel

Keynote Speaker: Marc Bracket, Ph.D.,  |  marc.brackett@yale.edu  

Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and professor in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine at Yale University. As a researcher for over 20 years, Marc has focused on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. Marc is the author of the bestselling book, Permission To Feel (Celadon/Macmillan), which has been translated into 22 languages. Most recently, with Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann, Marc and his team co-created the Apple award-winning app, HowWeFeel, that was designed to teach emotion skills and enhance well-being.

Bio: Marc A. Brackett is a research psychologist and the Founding Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. Brackett earned his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of New Hampshire in 2003, where he was supervised by emotional intelligence scholar John D. Mayer. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University with Mayer’s collaborator, Peter Salovey. Brackett’s research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, relationship quality, and mental health; the measurement of emotional intelligence; best practices for bringing emotional intelligence into schools and organizations; and the influences of emotional intelligence training on student and educator effectiveness, bullying prevention, and school climate. He is the author, co-author, and editor of over 125 scholarly publications and the developer of two university courses on emotional intelligence.[citation needed] His most recent book is Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive.

Brackett is the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to social emotional learning that has been approved by CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning). The acronym RULER refers to the five key emotion skills of Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions. RULER intends to increase personal wellbeing, effective teaching and leadership, academic achievement, and classroom emotional climate change. An essential aspect of RULER is that it involves training for educational leaders, teachers, support staff, students and families. To date, RULER has been adopted by 2009 schools across the globe, reaching over 1,000,000 students.

Publications

Brackett, M. A., & Kremenitzer, J. P., with Maurer, M., Carpenter, M., Rivers, S. E., & Elbertson, N. (Eds.). (2011). Creating emotionally literate classrooms: An introduction to The RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning. Portchester, New York: National Professional Resources.

Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., Reyes, M. R., & Salovey, P. (in press). Enhancing academic performance and social and emotional competence with the RULER Feeling Words Curriculum. Learning and Individual Differences.

Rivers, S. E., Brackett, M. A., Reyes, M. R., & Salovey, P. (in press). Improving the social and emotional climate of classrooms: A clustered randomized controlled trial testing The RULER Approach. Prevention Science.

Reyes, M. R., Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., Elbertson, N., & Salovey, P. (in press). The interaction effects of program training, dosage, and implementation quality on targeted student outcomes for The RULER Approach to social and emotional learning, School Psychology Review.

Brackett, M. A., Patti, J., Stern, R., Rivers, S. E., Elbertson, N., Chisholm, C., & Salovey, P. (2009). A sustainable, skill-based model to building emotionally literate schools. In R. Thompson, M. Hughes, & J. B. Terrell (Eds.), Handbook of developing emotional and social intelligence: Best practices, case studies, and tools (pp. 329–358). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Rivers, S. E., & Brackett, M. A. (2011). Achieving standards in the English language arts (and more) using The RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 27, 75–100.

Brackett, M. A., Reyes, M. R., Rivers, S. E., Elbertson, N. E., & Salovey, P. (2011). Classroom Emotional Climate, Teacher Affiliation, and Student Conduct. Journal of Classroom Interactions, 46, 27–46.

Reyes, M. R., Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., White, M., Mashburn, A. J., & Salovey, P. (in press). Classroom emotional climate, student engagement, and academic achievement, Journal of Educational Psychology.

Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., & Salovey, P. (2011). Emotional intelligence: Personal, Social, Educational, and Workplace Implications. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5, 88–103.

Brackett, M. A., Palomera, R., Mojsa, J., Reyes, M., & Salovey, P. (2010). Emotion regulation ability, job satisfaction, and burnout among British secondary school teachers. Psychology in the Schools, 47, 406–417.

Rivers, S. E., Brackett, M. A., Cook, M., Omori, M., Sickler, C., & Salovey, P. (in press). Emotion skills as a protective factor for risky behaviors among college students. Journal of College Student Development.

Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S., Shiffman, S., Lerner, N., & Salovey, P. (2006). Relating emotional abilities to social functioning: A comparison of performance and self-report measures of emotional intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 780–795.

Brackett, M. A., & Mayer, J. D. (2003). Convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of competing measures of emotional intelligence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1147–1158.

Brackett, M. A., Reyes, M. R., Rivers, S. E., Elbertson, N., & Salovey, P. (in press). Assessing teachers’ beliefs about social and emotional learning. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment.

Brackett, M. A., & Geher, G. (2006). Measuring emotional intelligence: Paradigmatic shifts and common ground. In J. Ciarrochi, J. P. Forgas & J. D. Mayer (Eds.), Emotional intelligence and everyday life (2nd ed.) (pp. 27–50). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Brackett, M. A., & Salovey, P. (2004). Measuring emotional intelligence as a mental ability with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. In G. Geher (Ed.), Measurement of Emotional Intelligence (pp. 179–194). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.

Moving Upstream: A Proactive Approach to Addressing Behaviors and Bullying

Speaker: Summer Prather-Smith, EdD  |  sprather@santaritaschools.org  |  Link to Summer’s Bio

Community is built through collective responsibility, participation and investment. Effectively addressing student behaviors and bullying requires schools to create a community that provides consistent, affirming, caring connections for all its members. Throughout this workshop participants will have the opportunity to actively engage with the “Upstream” equity-based strategies and practices that build community, proactively address discipline, and stop bullying.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Analyze the impact of “community” on the social-emotional wellbeing of a student being bullied, the bully, and the bystander
  2. Evaluate your current policies and protocols for bullying behaviors with a focus on the student being bullied, the bully, and the bystander
  3. Identify Equity-Based Community Building Strategies and Practices that can be immediately implemented at your site to support a student being bullied, the bully, and the bystander

References:

Barr, J., & Saltmarsh, S. (2014). “It all comes down to the Leadership”: The role of the school principal in fostering parent-school engagement. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 42(4), 491–505. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143213502189. Constantino, S. M. (2021). Engage every family: Five simple principles (Second). Corwin, a SAGE Company.

Goodall, J. (2018). Learning-centered parental engagement: Freire reimagined. Educational Review, 70(5), 603–621. https://doiorg.proxy.library.cpp.edu/10.1080/00131911.2017.1358697

Brubaker, T.H., Brubaker, E., Link, M. (2001). School Violence: Partnerships with Families for School Reform. Michigan Family Review, 6(1), 1-11. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mfr.4919087.0006.101