Category: Child Abuse

In response to the crisis at our southern border, the American Academy of Pediatrics has opened up access to all of the articles they have published on the impact of toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences:

“We hope that by opening these articles to everyone, it will become clear that placing children abruptly separated from parents in crowded detention centers is going to not just affect these children while they are kept there, but potentially will affect them for the rest of their lives.  These articles make a compelling argument that these children should be reunited with those who can love and comfort them as soon as possible.

While providing open access to every article on toxic stress we have published in Pediatrics for the past seven years may not bring an immediate end to this tragic situation, perhaps by educating all who are responsible for these immigrant children being separated and detained, the needs of children may be prioritized before the needs of politicians and in turn, this debacle will end and hopefully never occur again at any time for any child and loving family.  Enough is enough!”

You can access the full collection here.

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here.  And coming soon–the follow-up research brief on bruising, out at the end of the month!

Oh hey, Canada–I promise I know you guys are up there (and my, how particularly lovely your country looks from down here). I also recognize that I don’t do a very good job of sending training your way, mostly because I don’t stumble across it very often. But look! A webinar just for you, with the complicated, if not incredibly specific title, Stories and Signs: Tales from the U.K. of the Trafficking of Men and Boys for Forced Labour, with Questions for Canada. The session is being offered by the Online Training Initiative to Address Human Trafficking on July 26th at 3pm EDT. From the site:

Human trafficking takes many forms, but most of the time people tend to focus on the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation. Particularly within Canada, the emphasis on domestic sex trafficking, while crucial, may detract from identifying, preventing and responding to other forms of exploitation. Drawing on six years of experience in the UK, this webinar will highlight personal stories of encounters with survivors and frontline responders: from a Nigerian boy forced into domestic servitude by his aunt, to an Indian student tricked into working at a restaurant without pay; from Romanian boys coerced into begging and street crime, to Chinese men who drowned picking shellfish on the beach; from a Vietnamese boy trafficked around the world to cultivate cannabis, to homeless young men kept as slaves and forced into construction work. Do these forms of trafficking occur in Canada? Would we notice if they did? Let us know what you think. Bring your questions and insights, and we look forward to having you join us.

Register for the webinar here.

BTW, they have a host of archived webinars, so if you’re in Canada and this is a topic of interest, I suggest checking out their full library.

SAFEta and KIDSta have a webinar coming up next month, Differential Diagnosis in Pediatric Sexual Assault: Looking for the Zebra. The session will be held June 19th at 2pm ET. The session will be archived if you cannot attend live. From the registration:

Due to the well-documented acute and long-term negative health consequences associated with child sexual abuse, the medical forensic examination is an integral component of the coordinated community response to child sexual abuse. This webinar presentation will illustrate the differential diagnosis tree the clinician must consider when performing a prepubescent medical forensic exam or consulting when ano-genital injury has been identified. A review of normal pediatric anogenital anatomy, followed by case studies that include normal variants that can be mistaken for abuse, STI’s that may mimic trauma, straddle injury review, and traumatic injuries from sexual abuse.

Register here.

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here. 

More peds webinars coming up: the Tribal Forensic Healthcare Project is presenting Normal Variants in Pediatric Exams. The session will be held June 27th at 2pm ET. Diane Daiber and Kim Nash, both IAFN staff, will present the content. As with all webinars from this project, CEUs/CMEs are available. It will be archived if you cannot attend live. From the website:

This webinar presentation will illustrate the differential diagnosis tree the clinician must consider when performing a prepubescent medical forensic exam or consulting when ano-genital injury has been identified.  A review of normal pediatric anogenital anatomy, followed by case studies that include normal variants that can be mistaken for abuse, STI’s that may mimic trauma, straddle injury review, and traumatic injuries from sexual abuse.

Register here.

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here. 

Midwest Regional Children’s Advocacy Center has a webinar coming in June, It Really Is “Normal to be Normal” in Child Sexual Abuse. The session will be held June 28th at 1pm CT. I’m posting this pretty early, so hopefully, people will be able to make it, but they archive their sessions, so no worries if you have a conflict. From the website:

Brief Overview: A child abuse pediatrician will describe the medical evaluation for a child suspected of having been sexually abused with emphasis on why physical and laboratory findings are often absent. Reasons why children typically delay disclosure will be presented with accompany published references. Strategies and techniques for court preparation when a case of suspected child sexual abuse with a normal€ exam is being presented for civil hearing or criminal trial will also be discussed. Resources and literature references will be provided for the attendees.

Expert Presenter: Karen Farst, MD, MPH, is a child abuse pediatrician at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. She is an associate professor in the College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and director for the university’s Center for Children at Risk. She is a past president of the National Children’s Alliance Board of Directors. She earned her B.A. and M.D. from Texas Tech University and then completed a residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at UAMS. Following a child abuse fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, she completed a Masters of Public Health from Fay Boozman College of Public Health at UAMS.

Register here.

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here. 

{Don’t forget, we currently have a giveaway going on. You have until Friday to enter…}

I hadn’t seen this video until WHO tweeted it out yesterday; a lot of you will find it relevant to your work (and it’s a great teaching tool). Enjoy…

I was asked by an FHO reader if I would talk about what’s on my current reading list. It’s a favorite topic of discussion for me (I love hearing what people are reading), so here’s what is on my list THIS week (it could all change by next week, naturally). Note, I don’t usually have a ton of uninterrupted time for pleasure reading except on airplanes (I don’t work on airplanes–that is an unbreakable rule of self-care for me), but when it overlaps with my professional life, I make time. So in no particular order:

The General Appearance of Patients (Akshay Govind, which came to my attention because of the corresponding discussion on the IAFN community site–also, come on folks, document patient appearance and demeanor. Or at the very least, have a clinical rationale and not a courtroom rationale for not doing it, since it’s relatively common practice to include such documentation). {H/t Nancy Downing}

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity (by Nadine Burke Harris on the health impacts of trauma in childhood)

Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say (Kelly Corrigan)

How Collaboration Wins (Harvard Business Review)

It’s been a tick since the last giveaway, so include in the comments something on YOUR reading list right now, and I will select one person at random (THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED) to receive their own copy of The Deepest Well (you can read more about the book here, or watch her excellent TED talk here). Leave a comment by 5pm ET on January 26th to be eligible. Giveaway open to all FHO readers, regardless of location.

{This post is not sponsored. However, some links take readers to Amazon affiliate links. Purchases provide a nominal commission to this site that helps offset the cost of regularly maintaining FHO.}

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here. 

Happy New Year, all! Hope everyone had a relaxing and peaceful holiday. I really needed the downtime, but I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. The road beckons next week, so this is my week to organize and prep for the next several months of travel.

Midwest Regional Children’s Advocacy Center is always on my short list for dependable continuing education, so it’s fitting we start the year off with one of their offerings. Child Interviewing 2018: Update on Research and Practice will be held February 22nd at 1pm CT. From the site:

[The session] will discuss the major research advances in 2017/2018 that help interviewers to do a better job when they question children, and whenever possible, provide videotaped examples of the novel procedures.

Register here.