Dr. Mark Elliott, Medical Director of Littleton Adventist Hospital Emergency Department spoke live to Channel 7 News Tuesday about our community’s suicide attempt rate and the programs that the Greater Littleton Youth Initiative uses as part of its Community Suicide Prevention Project. (Yellow Ribbon and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST).)

The interview was arranged by the hospital to support the on-going community effort to grow and expand the suicide prevention project. Last week was suicide prevention week; all activities took place within the school district. The project has been made possible through a $150,000 donation from Littleton Adventist Hospital.

Please see the link below.

Thank you,
Kay

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/17956961/detail.html

The Greater Littleton Youth Initiative (GLYI) held suicide prevention week last week, November 3 through November 7; all activities took place within the Littleton Public School District. Activities included a “bubble release”, Yellow Ribbon assemblies and presentations, LINK leader discussions, poster contests and designated times of day for students to rest and take care of themselves.

The GLYI’s Community Suicide Prevention Project sponsored this event through a generous donation from Littleton Adventist Hospital. The suicide prevention project was created in 2005 in an effort to lower the high suicide attempt rate in the South Metro Denver area, particularly among young people. The project consists of two programs that when implemented together create a continuous web of suicide prevention. The goal is to implement the programs community-wide.

Please give an ENORMOUS thank you to the school district for running this event as well as leading the suicide prevention project within the Littleton community. Without their commitment to spreading the word that “it is o.k. to ask for help,” our project would not be the success that it is today.

The Family Dinner Table: Implications for Children’s Health and Well-being
The average family meal lasts barely 20 minutes — and that’s a major missed opportunity, according to a new brief from the Society for Research in Child Development. Sharing a meal regularly can boost children’s health and well-being, reducing the likelihood that they’ll become obese or use drugs and increase the odds that they’ll do well in school.

Public School Insights Spotlight: Engaging Youth in Civics
In the wake of this historic presidential election, Public School Insights (a project of the Learning First Alliance) turns its attention to civic education. Here are just a few of their new articles:

• Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on Turning Students into Citizens. Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has ideas for reinvigorating civics in American schools. For starters: more time for civics, better civics curriculum and more dynamic teaching.

• Closing the “Civic Achievement Gap”: A Conversation with Harvard Researcher Meira Levinson.Poor students and students of color lag behind their peers in civic knowledge and engagement — and are far less likely to believe they can make a difference through civic action.

• “Believe in What You Teach”: An Interview with Award-Winning Civics Teacher Cheryl Cook-Kallio. After decades of teaching, Cook-Kallio won a seat on the Pleasanton, California City Council. Here, she talks about her innovative, hands-on approach to civic education.

Find and share stories of success and innovation in public schools at publicschoolinsights.org/stories.

21-Year Study of Children Set to Begin

By KATE MURPHY

Researchers will begin recruiting in January for a nationwide study that will follow more than 100,000 children for more than two decades.

Bush Signs Remaining Youth-Directed Bills
This month, President Bush signed into law two bills aimed at keeping children safer and healthier: the Protect Our Children Act and the Reconnecting Homeless Youth Act. The latter provides a funding increase for programs serving homeless youth and “mandates a study on runaway and homeless youth every five years in order know how to serve this group properly,” Youth Today reports.

Schoolyard Bullying: Which Kids Are Most Vulnerable?

By Hilary Hylton

Playground gibes are a rite of passage for most school-age kids, but for some children, teasing at school can turn into outright violence and abuse. Researchers say that as many as 1 in 10 children suffer physical attacks, name-calling and other social aggression at school, and a new study suggests that a child’s risk of becoming a chronic victim of bullying may depend on factors that appear very early in life.

A ‘Dose of Nature’ for Attention Problems

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Parents of children with attention deficit problems are always looking for new strategies to help their children cope. An interesting new study suggests that spending time in nature may help.

Action Kit to Help Cities Create Youth Master Plans
The National League of Cities’ Institute for Youth, Education and Families has a new action kit to help municipal leaders create a master plan that brings together the schools, agencies and organizations working with youth to develop a shared vision and framework to coordinate services.  For a hard copy, please contact Katie Meade at meade@nlc.org.

Tara Parker-Pope on Health

Research indicates that as many as 75 percent of teens have been bullied online, but only one in 10 have reported the problem to parents or other adults, a new study shows.

The study, published in the September issue of The Journal of School Health, is the latest to sound the alarm about so-called cyber-bullying, which can occur on social networking sites and in e-mail and text messages. Sometimes cyber-bullying involves taunting or threatening e-mail or text messages or putting embarrassing pictures or personal attacks on teen networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.