News and press releases

December 16, 2016

Portland, Ore. — CareOregon, a national leader in health care innovation, has awarded $459,000 in grants to help mitigate the consequences of childhood trauma. CareOregon’s fall round of community benefit grants—$335,000 for large development investment grants of up to $100,000, and $124,000 capacity investment grants of up to $20,000—focus on programs and projects that address and treat the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs.

The larger projects include:

• Family Nurturing Center, $80,000 to support the Jackson County relief nursery’s comprehensive family support program. The program works with the community's highest-risk families with children 5 and younger.
• Lutheran Community Services, $65,000 to support the Refugee Family Resiliency Program in the Portland area.
• Columbia Service Center/Northwest Regional Education Service District, $53,000 to support the Columbia County ACEs and TIC (Trauma Informed Care) Learning Collaborative within Columbia County school districts.
• Black Parent Initiative, $50,000 to support the 2017 Pre-Birth through First 1000 Days Initiative in the Portland Metro area. CareOregon funds will cover expanded home visiting staff, the Black Family Resource Coordinator and stipends for community mentors.
• Pathfinders of Oregon, $50,000 to support the Center for Family Success. Pathfinders works in the Portland area to improve outcomes for children of justice involved parents through support programs that focus on self-sufficiency and family reunification.
• Connect the Dots Clatsop County, $37,000. Connect the Dots is the 501(C)3 agent for the Clatsop County Way to Wellville Strategic Advisory Council. Their goal is to establish a trauma-informed care professional learning community for the five school districts in the county.

“Over the past few years, there has been profound evidence that negative experiences in the early years of life can have a lifetime of consequences for an individual’s physical, mental and social health,” said Martin Taylor, CareOregon’s executive director of Public Policy and Community Relations. “The more adverse childhood experiences someone faces, the greater the lifelong risk for illness, poor academic performance and even incarceration.”

Both state and federal health authorities monitor eight categories of ACEs: household substance abuse, verbal abuse, parental separation or divorce, physical abuse, household mental illness, violent treatment of mother, sexual abuse and incarcerated household member. They’ve found the same long-term risks: heart disease,stroke, diabetes, asthma, mental distress, depression, smoking, disability, reduced income, unemployment and lower educational attainment.

CareOregon awarded funding to organizations located within the service areas of its partner Oregon Health Plan Coordinated Care Organizations: Jackson Care Connect, Columbia Pacific CCO and Health Share of Oregon.

“In our medical networks, we’re putting a great deal of effort into supporting Trauma-Informed Care, which recognizes the effects of ACEs and responds to them in the medical and mental health offices,” said Taylor. “To be really effective, we need to go out beyond the doctors offices and address ACEs in the schools and the community. That’s what the programs funded by these grants do.”

Click here to view all Fall 2016 grant recipients.

For information, contact Jerry Rhodes, 503-416-3718, rhodesj@careoregon.org.