Background
- History of the Palix Foundation and the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative (AFWI)
- Our Advisory Council
key reference documents
- Supportive Relationships & Active Skill-Building Strengthen the Foundation of Resilience (Harvard University, Center on the Developing Child): Working paper 13 summarizes how recent discoveries in molecular biology, genomics, and epigenetics provide remarkable new insights into the underlying causal mechanisms that explain how supportive relationships build the capacities to deal with adversity. This rapidly advancing research frontier demonstrates that resilience is the result of multiple interactions among protective factors in the social environment and highly responsive biological systems. These findings provide an opportunity to examine how current policies and programs could be enhanced to produce more favorable life outcomes for disadvantaged children, both by reducing their exposure to sources of adversity and by designing better ways of building their coping skills and adaptive capacities. The paper introduces the framing metaphor of the Resilience Scale to explain how early life experiences can tip the balance toward positive or negative life outcomes.
- Frontiers of Innovation Projects (Harvard University, Center on the Developing Child): The Harvard Center on the Developing Child created its Frontiers of Innovation Projects to advance science-based interventions. The AFWI expanded on these ideas and graduated the Center's approach into practice.
- Preventing Childhood Toxic Stress - Partnering with Families and Communities to Promote Relational Health (Andrew Garner and Michael Yogman): This article articulates the importance of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships in early childhood as a means to build resilience and buffer the impact of toxic stress. It proposes a "relational" approach to public health that encourages and creates opportunities for these interactions, which will in turn mitigate negative health outcomes down the line.
- Vibrant and Healthy Kids - Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity (The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine): When looking to move towards health equity, this report proposes that a multigenerational approach which recognizes the significance of early brain development is foundational. Starting with the science of healthy development and ending with systems level recommendations, this piece details the road to assisting individuals in reaching their full health potential.
part 1 - what do individuals need? how the resilience scale works
The genesis of the brain story
- The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child
- The Frameworks Institute
- Working Papers (Harvard University, Center on the Developing Child)
How does the public understand child development, children's mental health, addiction, and resilience
- Epigenetics - How Experiences Change Brains (Thomas Boyce and Pat Levitt): Drs. Thomas Boyce and Patrick Levitt describe the epigenetic mechanisms by which experiences change Brain Architecture.
- Serve and Return Interaction Shapes Brain Circuitry (Harvard University, Center on the Developing Child): This video provides an introduction to serve and return interactions, including detailing their importance and giving a broad overview of their neural basis.
- Brain Story Concepts - Serve & Return (Palix Foundation): Learn why early interactions between young children and their parents or caregivers are essential to promoting healthy brain development, and how these positive experiences help to build fundamental brain architecture in children. Serve and return occurs when a parent or caregiver is responsive to a child’s verbal cues and actions. By providing positive feedback via eye contact, sound, words and physical interaction, the adult helps spark the child’s interest and enthusiasm in practicing things like speech, language and social learning. Without active serve and return engagement, children can lose interest in these activities, potentially undermining the development of fundamental brain architecture.
- Executive Function (Palix Foundation): This video discusses the importance of executive function, or the air traffic control system of the brain. Executive function encompasses the higher order operations that help us organize information and regulate our behaviour, including prioritizing, delaying gratification, planning ahead, coping with frustration, and following rules. Children with good executive function find it easier to get along with others and develop adaptive responses to social demands. Conversely, kids without well-developed executive function skills experience higher levels of frustration, problem behaviour and anxiety. Executive function skills develop early in life in stable environments with the support of attentive caregivers. Toxic stress and chaotic environments, on the other hand, tend to lead to weaker brain architecture as well as limited opportunities to learn and practice essential executive function skills.
- Understanding Motivation - Building the Brain Architecture That Supports Learning, Health, and Community Participation (Harvard University, Center on the Developing Child): Working Paper 14 gives an overview of motivation and its components (e.g. approach vs avoidance, intrinsic vs extrinsic), provides an explanation of how this system develops throughout childhood and adolescence, and supplies suggestions for how an understanding of the neural basis of this system can inform interactions with kids.
- Toxic Stress (Palix Foundation): This video explains how negative experiences in childhood can impose large costs on brain health and development later in life. Our bodies respond to stress through various physiological mechanisms, such as increasing heart rate and the release of certain hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These processes are not necessarily harmful if attentive caregivers are present to limit their duration, intensity, and frequency. With strong social support, stress can be either positive or tolerable and result in healthy development. If a child lacks those resources or if stressors are severe, recurring, and chronic, hormone levels will stay high, disrupting the development of brain architecture. Toxic stress can include abuse and neglect and may result in serious mental and physical health problems beyond childhood.
- The Consequences of Toxic Stress (Pat Levitt): Dr. Pat Levitt from the University of Southern California describes the consequences when key brain areas are harmed by Toxic Stress.
adverse childhood experiences (ace)
- Understanding ACEs (Palix Foundation): Brain development has an enormous impact on our lifelong health. The experiences we have growing up change our brain architecture in ways that influence our mental and physical health. This video highlights the landmark Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) study, which explains the relationship between ACEs and a number of health outcomes. The original ACEs study was conducted by physician and researcher, Vincent Felitti, who was Chief of Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventive Medicine. To demonstrate the connection between ACEs and health outcomes, Dr. Felitti developed a series of questions called the ACE Questionnaire. Researchers used this questionnaire and found a strong relationship between ACE scores and health outcomes in Alberta. Equipped with this research and an understanding of the science of brain development, we know it’s never too late to add positive supports and lighten the burden of past experiences so that people can become more resilient.
- Brains: Journey to Resilience (Palix foundation): Discover the science of resilience in this engaging and information-packed video. In a world where human brains inch across snowy landscapes, where perils lurk in every shadow, one community will rally behind a struggling brain—and just might change the world in the process. Learn about the resilience scale in this scientifically rigorous (and cinematically epic) resource created by the AFWI in consultation with the FrameWorks Institute and the Harvard Center on the Developing Child.
- Stress & Parental Care: Intergenerational Transmission of Parenting Abilities (Linda Mayes): Dr. Linda Mayes, from the Yale School of Medicine, discusses the impact of stress on parental care. Using the brain's reward system and its regulation of stress as an example, Dr. Mayes discusses how addicted parents can respond to children with maladaptive behaviours when faced with parenting situations. She also discusses how parenting abilities are passed down via intergenerational transmission, demonstrating that children reared in stressful environments are likely to assume the stress-inducing traits of their parents when it comes to raising their own children.
real time application and intervention
- Addiction is a Symptom of Altered Brain Architecture (George Koob): Dr. George Koob summarizes addiction as a brain disease with impairment to the reward system, the stress system, and the executive function system.
application - individuals
- The Family Centre - Brain Story in Practice (Palix Foundation): How the Brain Story is helping clients at the Edmonton Family Centre to manage the effects of intergenerational trauma.
application - Families
- Brain Story Certification Graduates - Fresh Start Recovery Centre (Palix Foundation): Counsellors and clients at the Fresh Start Recovery Centre are using the Brain Story to help them understand their experiences with addiction, recovery, and intergenerational healing.
application - communities
- Brain Story Certification Graduate - Charlton Weasel Head (Palix Foundation): How the Brain Story is helping Kainai High School associate principal Charlton Weasel Head and his students manage the effects of intergenerational trauma.
- Nitsitapii Reziliency (Palix Foundation): In the midst of the opioid crisis, the Kainai community comes together to listen to the youth and heal intergenerational trauma through self-expression.
- The Brain Story in Blackpool (Palix Foundation): Does the Brain Story work outside of North America? The success of the Blackpool Better Start initiative shows that it does. Blackpool Better Start is a cross-sector initiative that brings families, government, justice and social agencies together around the science of early brain development and its impact on lifelong health.
part 2 - what do organizations do?
- Frontiers of Innovation Projects (Harvard University, Center on the Developing Child): The Harvard Center on the Developing Child created its Frontiers of Innovation Projects to advance science-based interventions. The AFWI expanded on these ideas and graduated the Center's approach into practice through taking their coding scheme and matching it to the three parts of the Resilience Scale.
part 3 - what does the system have?
- Embedding the Brain Story (Palix Foundation): The Palix Foundation and the AFWI are poised for a significant shift to focus “downstream”—mobilizing knowledge with individual change agents, catalyzing organizational and systems change, building on that success, and embedding knowledge at the front lines—all to catalyze direct change for children and families. This report outlines the steps the AFWI is taking to embed the Brain Story within governmental and organizational fabrics.