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 [...]

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 [...]

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 that [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The Professor Gates story brings to mind the wise edict that was ingrained in me during my training to become a counselor. “Focus on the process, not the content.” It seems, however, that many of us are enthralled by the content, which may lead us to be oblivious to the underlying processes at work. Machiavelli [...]

In considering what we know about the exchanges between Dr. Gates and Sgt. Crowley, I would surmise to say that race does indeed have influence here. Race is likely relative for Dr. Gates as an African American male in a situation similar to this based on the perceived power differential and the historical relationship with [...]