Upstream Interventions

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Their Impact on Long-Term Health

What are ACEs? According to the CDC, “Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0-17 years) such as experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect; witnessing violence in the home; and having a family member attempt or die by suicide. Also included are aspects of the child’s environment that can undermine [...]

How Have Other Local Health Departments Positioned Themselves as Community Chief Health Strategists? (Part 1)

We hope you've been following our blog article series on public health as the community chief health strategist. If you read our recent blog article, "What is a Chief Health Strategist," then you may remember that we shared an example of a local health department that was taking on the role of chief health strategist [...]

Addressing Root Causes: Trauma-Informed Practice (Part 2)

How to Employ Trauma-Informed Practice In Part 1 of this article, I shared about a webinar I attended on trauma-informed practice, hosted by the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice out of the University of Washington titled, "Trauma-Informed Practice - A Rural Perspective". The presenter was Karolyn Holden, BSN, RN, Director of Grays Harbor County [...]

Addressing Root Causes: Trauma-Informed Practice (Part 1)

Our blog article entitled, "Public Health 3.0 or Public Health Modernization: What is it and What Does it Mean? (Part 2)" touched on ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, and how public health departments can strategically head off poor health outcomes by addressing the root cause (such as addressing ACEs) early on. In March, I had [...]

Addressing the Opioid Crisis: Upstream Intervention through Data Exchange

Quick Facts About the Opioid Crisis: In 2016, there were more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in the US 40% of those deaths involved a prescription opioid More than 46 people die each day from prescription opioid overdoses $504 billion was spent in 2015 to contain the crises (2.8% of 2015's GDP) We are indeed [...]

Empowering Local Health Departments to Address Health Inequity

One of our colleagues, Karen Monsen, PhD, RN, FAAN, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota School of Nursing and Director of the Omaha System Partnership, recently had the opportunity to speak at the Michigan Premier Public Health Conference on achieving health equity. Her presentation was titled, “Social Behavioral Determinants of Health (SBDH) & the Omaha System: [...]

Community Health, Population Health… But where is Public Health?

Article after article has been written about the challenges of Community Health. Very few of these articles disagree that true community health improvement starts upstream of hospitals and clinics and then continues downstream, yet we continually see hospitals and clinics charged with assessing the community's health. Even the Affordable Care Act requires nonprofit hospitals to [...]

Go to Top