“Dear Colleagues, We have returned from Haiti after serving in a clinic that is run by a religious organization, Partners in Development. This clinic is located in Blanchard, the poorest of poor communities outside Port au Prince. In one week, the clinic with one Haitian doctor and American nurses, who are like Florence Nightingales, served [...]

Time seems to pass by quickly as we train professionals about psychosocial needs and reactions after a disaster. We have trained various professionals who consistently apply the information to their personal and professional lives. Each group has been great to work with as we engage them in various activities, from doing grounding techniques to peer [...]

You’re a counselor, so I know you’ve had the experience of listening to someone with your complete attention. But have you ever had someone listen to you with complete attention? I trust you have. It felt great, didn’t it? So how would you feel if you had about 80 people listening to you with complete [...]

On January 21, I was sent to Haiti by the American Red Cross (ARC) on a special assignment. Having 17 years of experience as a Disaster Mental Health Volunteer for the ARC I have been deployed to over 25 national disaster relief operations and worked extensively with my local ARC Chapters so I know a [...]

On Friday (2/12/2010), three ACA staff headed into still snowmageddoned Washington DC for the release of the long-awaited Institute of Medicine (IOM) TRICARE study. With reports of three hour commutes into DC on the first day of post-snowpocalypse work, we had every reason to back out of attending the meeting. But this report was just [...]

Karin Jordan is an ACA member working in Haiti. This is a letter she sent today to David Kaplan, ACA’s Chief Professional Officer. Hi David, Time seemes to pass quickly as I work with the displaced people in the many camps all over the place. I have spent time with children, adolescents and adults, seeing [...]

I am not a counselor. Nevertheless, having worked as a lobbyist for the American Counseling Association for the past fourteen years, I’ve learned a little bit about how counseling works, and one of the tenets I’ve heard more than once is that change is scary. My recent work for ACA on health care policy bears [...]

It is with great sadness to hear Richard Cohen continually misrepresent what we KNOW about sexual orientation–that is, it is a trait we are born with not something we can change or “repair”– and that his blatantly false propaganda is now being used to fuel something as heinous as the “Kill the Gays” bill in [...]