Underground GRIT – Addressing ACEs with Formerly Incarcerated Youth
About
The ACEs Aware Community Spotlight webinar series highlights the innovative work being done by organizations across California to prevent, identify, and respond to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. In this Community Spotlight webinar, we feature Underground GRIT, a Southern California community-based organization that advocates for and provides a full scope of transformative services and support to men, women, and youth who have been system impacted. Led by Co-Founder and Program Manager Sharon Tang, MPH, the presentation describe the work of Underground GRIT, explore lessons learned about ACEs and trauma-informed care for system-impacted youth, and include a facilitated discussion with Josue (Swey) Pineda, a former member of Underground GRIT and now a case manager and policy advocate, about the experience of being formerly incarcerated, the life-changing impacts on health, and the need for culturally responsive and community-centered supports and healing from ACEs and trauma.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the disproportionate impacts of ACEs and toxic stress and the resulting health disparities for formerly incarcerated youth.
- Describe best practices and lessons learned about implementing stress mitigation strategies and trauma-informed approaches for re-entry within a network of care.
- Discuss current systemic gaps and opportunities for health care teams and community-based organizations to support formerly incarcerated populations in California.
Professional Credit
- This activity provides the following types of credit: AMA, AAPA, APA, ANCC, ASWB, ABIM-MOC, ABP-MOC.
- 1.0 credits are available.
- Activity document
Featuring
Sharon Tang, MPH is relentlessly dedicated to whole-person community healing. She is the co-founder of Underground GRIT, spearheading non-profit re-entry, in-reach, and holistic mental health initiatives for youth and adults returning from prisons, jails, juvenile detention centers, and immigration detention facilities. She co-founded Underground Panthers collaborative partnership with Chapman University, paving an incarceration-to-college pipeline for formerly incarcerated youth and young adults. In addition, she was selected as a Young Person of Color (YPOC) Fellow for the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) for extraordinary leadership in the fields of criminal justice reform, violence reduction, and community organizing. She is a first-generation college graduate and child of refugees from the Vietnam War and Cambodian genocide. She made it her personal mission to gain training that resolves the issues she was too young to solve for her family.
Josue (Swey) Pineda became a youth advocate and an abolitionist of the carceral system after he was facing 23 years to life in prison at age 19. Post-incarceration, he has mentored youth inside juvenile hall and post their release. At Resilience Orange County, he created curriculum centered around youth development for formerly incarcerated youth. He co-hosts Not in Isolation: Voices of Youth, a podcast that centers the experience of youth who have been in solitary confinement, as part of a nationwide campaign to Stop Solitary for Kids. He is currently a Youth Case Manager and Reentry Coordinator with Hoops 4 Justice. He is a fellow for the Stop the Musick Coalition, organizing to end the expansion of a facility that criminalizes serious mental illness and instead invest in community wellness through care. He is Seeking Safety certified and currently serves as a Young Adult Advisor for the ACEs Aware initiative.
Based in the Sacramento area, Dr. Owen was an adviser to the ACEs Aware initiative before joining UCAAN as a co-Principal Investigator and Senior Director of Clinical & Academic Programs, Health Equity. Prior to joining UCAAN, Dr. Owen was an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UC Davis Health System. Dr. Owen earned an MD at UCSF, completed his Pediatric Residency at UC Davis, and completed his fellowship in Community and Societal Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine - Jacksonville. He recently completed the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership at Yale University.