With the country’s first inoculations on the books this week, we are a critical step further toward seeing the other side of the pandemic. We remain humbled by the extraordinary efforts of our health care workforce and other first responders. 

The California Surgeon General’s Report, published last week, reminds us, too, of the incredible challenges in preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences that similarly require every sector’s involvement if we are to realign social, economic, research, and health goals toward addressing the public health crises of our time. Read on to learn more about the first-ever California Surgeon General’s Report and our other programmatic highlights to round out the most difficult year of our collective experience.

In partnership,  

California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris published the state’s first Surgeon General’s Report last week, titled Roadmap for Resilience: The California Surgeon General's Report on Adverse Childhood Experiences, Toxic Stress, and Health. The effort was co-led by the Surgeon General’s Chief Health Officer Dr. Devika Bhushan and co-authored by CIAPM Co-Director Dr. Julianne McCall. Every member of CIAPM was involved, as Contributing Author (former Science Fellow Dr. Ken McCullough), Contributors (Co-Director Dr. Shannon Muir, and Policy Fellow Gloria Hyunsoo Kim), Designer (Science Communication Specialist & Administrator Megan Varvais), and Reference Managers (April Booth and Aiyana Emigh Cortez).

Included in the 438-page report are equitable and practical response solutions, models, and best practices to be replicated or tailored to serve diverse community needs. International experts across sectors and specialties advised on the report’s science-based approaches to primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies for Adverse Childhood Experiences and toxic stress. Sector-specific stand-alone sections are also included, providing guidance in the following areas: Healthcare, Public Health, Social Services, Education, Early Childhood, and Justice.

Dr. Burke Harris presented key findings from the report in a recorded, public webinar on December 10.

CIAPM's two Graduate Student Interns are now our Policy Fellows. Gloria Kim is pursuing a PhD in Microbiology at UC Davis, and Aiyana Emigh Cortez is a Computational Biologist and Biophysics PhD candidate at UC Davis.

CIAPM is participating in CCORE, a 14-month racial equity capacity-building program for government employees.

CCORE training took a brief pause in December, and will resume in January. During this break, CIAPM started working on a precision medicine and public health-specific root cause analysis with the Results-Based Accountability tool developed by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity. This will inform our work and become a part of the larger Racial Equity Action Plan (REAP) being developed by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research. The Strategic Growth Council released its own REAP earlier this year.

Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH, was appointed on December 7 to serve as the Director of the California Department of Public Health. Dr. Aragón was a member of the Governor's Precision Medicine Advisory Committee from 2017-2018, which authored the 2018 report Precision Medicine: An Action Plan for California. As highlighted in our October newsletter, he was appointed to the Governor’s COVID-19 Scientific Safety Review Workgroup, which confirmed on Monday the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine. Dr. Aragón joined the City & County of San Francisco Department of Public Health in 1996 and has served as the Health Officer and Director of the Population Health Division since 2011. He is also Volunteer Faculty for the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

Governor Newsom announced the appointment during his COVID-19 press briefing on December 7, "Tomás has been very active in the fight to eliminate this pandemic, to mitigate not just the spread of this virus, but to mitigate the number of deaths related to this virus and has put out a lot of protocols that have been replicated all across the state. We are very enthusiastic to have him now on the team to continue to supplement our efforts as we move into this next and challenging phase."

Read more about Dr. Aragón’s driving focus on health equity, his celebrated early handling of the pandemic, and his inspiring background as the son of Nicaraguan immigrants in San Francisco.